Nicole Chung in Conversation with Meaghan O’Connell and Lydia Kiesling

We are delighted to welcome Nicole Chung to discuss her book, All You Can Ever Know (just released in paperback by Catapult) with Portland authors Meaghan O’Connell and Lydia Kiesling on Tuesday, November 5th, at 7 pm. The thread of motherhood connects these three authors and their books, a jump-off point for conversation about parenting, race, identity, and family.

Nicole Chung was placed for adoption by her Korean parents and raised by a white family in a rural Oregon town. From childhood, she heard the story of her adoption as a comforting, prepackaged myth. She believed that her biological parents had made the ultimate sacrifice in the hope of giving her a better life. With warmth, candor, and startling insight, Nicole Chung tells of her search for the people who gave her up, which coincided with the birth of her own child. All You Can Ever Know is a profound, moving chronicle of surprising connections and the repercussions of unearthing painful family secrets—vital reading for anyone who has ever struggled to figure out where they belong.

All You Can Ever Know was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography, long-listed for the PEN Open Book Award, and named a Best Book of the Year by nearly two dozen publications, including The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, Time, Newsday, and Library Journal.

Meaghan O’Connell writes about the fears and anxieties of motherhood that are still taboo and often unspoken, in her unflinchingly frank and funny manner And Now We Have Everything, which was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award for Creative Nonfiction.

Lydia Kiesling’s razor-sharp debut novel, The Golden State, tells the story of a woman and her young daughter, weaving class and cultural breakdowns into the story of motherhood: its voracious worry, frequent tedium, and enthralling, wondrous love. Kiesling was named a “5 Under 35” honoree by the National Book Foundation.