The memoir All You Can Ever Know (Catapult) is written with all the style and narrative of great fiction, so it’s no surprise that acclaimed novelists Celeste Ng (Everything I Never Told You, Little Fires Everywhere) and Alexander Chee (Edinburgh, The Queen of the Night) have sung its praises. The debut, written by Catapult magazine’s editor in chief, Nicole Chung, traces the author’s life from being put up for adoption by her Korean parents when she was born prematurely in a Seattle hospital, to being raised by a white family in a sheltered Oregon town. Chung describes a childhood of constantly being the only nonwhite child in the room, of never seeing people who looked like her, and of facing prejudice because of it. As these and other layers of the seemingly uncomplicated adoption come to light, Chung highlights the difficulties not only of her unique situation, but of adoptees in general. In a recent article about the book, Chung wrote, “I often wonder if I would have become a storyteller if not for adoption. On the one hand, that is in my genes: my birth father is a writer. Yet I do think it was partly feeling like an outsider—not just in my white family, but in the place where I grew up—that made me almost desperate for a way to express who I was.” (Amazon.com)