Getting Personal with Nicole Chung
#### What do you share with the world\u2014and what do you hold back? How do you talk about family secrets or childhood trauma with strangers? And what happens when you bring more of your most personal experiences to your work? This week, we go deep on the power of getting personal\u2014and the choices we have to make along the way.\n\nBefore we start, Sara and Katel break some bad news: Jenn\u2019s not here today, and it\u2019s looking like she won\u2019t be able to join us for the rest of the season. We\u2019re sending some big hugs her way, but we have _so_ much to talk about right now, we\u2019re gonna keep on going.\n\n\n\nOur guest today is the incredibly kind, talented, and just plain fucking rad writer and editor Nicole Chung. She\u2019s the author of the new memoir, _All You Can Ever Know_\u2014which is on sale T O D A Y ([ugh just buy it already](https://books.catapult.co/products/all-you-can-ever-know-pre-order-by-nicole-chung)). It chronicles her story of transracial adoption, growing up in a white family in small-town Oregon, and finding her birth family while starting to raise her own children. Reading it made us laugh and cry and fall even more in love with Nicole.\n\nIn addition to being an author, Nicole is also the editor-in-chief of _[Catapult](https://catapult.co/)_, a literary magazine, and the former managing editor of _[The Toast](http://the-toast.net/)_, everyone\u2019s favorite weird-funny-feminist site. We had _so_ much to talk with her about.\n\n**Follow Nicole** : [Twitter](https://twitter.com/nicole_soojung) | [Insta](https://www.instagram.com/nicolesoojung/?hl=en)\n\n> It was difficult to start sharing such personal stories about my family and about adoption and about racism that I\u2019d experienced. And it\u2019s not necessarily that I needed someone externally to validate them or to say, \u201cthis is legitimate, this really happened, this is important,\u201d but I think just a little human kindness and, like, honestly went a very, very long way. The Toast was a fantastic community\u2026 Every time I wrote something there\u2014I mean, both the goofy stuff like \u201cIf John Cho Were Your Boyfriend\u201d and the more serious pieces on race or adoption or family\u2014the response was overwhelmingly positive and supportive, and it was just really a privilege and a honor to get to edit and publish and write for that community at The Toast. I think it did make me braver. \n> **\u2014Nicole Chung, author, _All You Can Ever Know_**\n#### Links from the interview\n\n- Nicole\u2019s longread about [writing while grieving](https://longreads.com/2018/03/01/how-to-write-a-memoir-while-grieving/)\n- The long history of [Oregon\u2019s racist exclusion laws](https://longreads.com/2018/07/12/oregons-racist-past/)\n- Love for Nicole\u2019s editor, [Julie Buntin](https://twitter.com/juliebuntin) at Catapult\n- Nicole\u2019s [writing at The Toast](http://the-toast.net/2016/06/09/the-best-of-nicole-chung/), including [If John Cho Were Your Boyfriend](http://the-toast.net/2015/03/24/john-cho-boyfriend/)\n- _[All You Can Ever Know](https://books.catapult.co/products/all-you-can-ever-know-pre-order-by-nicole-chung)_, on sale now\n\n#### Also in this episode\n\nChatting with Nicole got us thinking a lot about what it means to share your story with the world\u2014in your writing, in a talk, or, say\u2026on a podcast. So we dive into some of our own stories, and t