How Big Questions Inform Fiction, featuring Rachel Khong

This week’s Write-minded centers questions, and how questions guide writers, drive fiction, and unearth important stories. Guest Rachel Khong shares how the big and provocative question of who’s a “real American” informed her new novel and why she writes without an outline. We also talk about ambition and drive, why novelists have to grapple with people speculating what in their fiction is “real,” and much more.

ABOUT RACHEL KHONG

Rachel Khong is the author of Goodbye, Vitamin, which won the 2017 California Book Award for First Fiction, and most recently of Real Americans. From 2011 to 2016, Rachel was the managing editor then executive editor of Lucky Peach magazine. In 2018, she founded The Ruby, a work and event space for women and nonbinary writers and artists in San Francisco’s Mission district.