All You Can Ever Know: A Memoir

Nicole Chung (b. 1981) is a Korean American author and editor. She was born to Korean parents who put her up for adoption after she spent two months in the NICU at the Seattle Children’s Hospital. Her adoptive parents, a white Catholic couple originally from Ohio, raised her in a predominantly white town in Oregon. After attending Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, Nicole moved to the Washington, DC, area where she and her husband, Dan, are raising their two daughters.

Nicole is a contributing writer at The Atlantic, the former editor-in-chief of Catapult magazine, and the former managing editor of The Toast. She has published essays and articles on a wide range of topics, including adoption, family, race, and gender. She has also written about Asian representation in the media, including the impact of seeing the Japanese American figure skating champion, Kristi Yamaguchi, on television. In 2023, Nicole published a second memoir titled A Living Remedy, which addresses the death of her parents and the American healthcare system.

All You Can Ever Know is a bestselling memoir that recounts Nicole’s experiences as a transracial adoptee and her search for her birth family. The book received widespread acclaim.