“If I had known about the twists and turns beforehand, I like to think I would have kept going, but maybe it’s better not to know.” —Vanessa Hua, author of Forbidden City

Jay Hopler and Kimberly Johnson discuss their new books, the techniques and craft decisions they used in writing these collections, and the occasion to which both books respond: Hopler’s diagnosis of terminal prostate cancer in 2017.

“Adjust one small plot point in the second half of the book, and you realize you’ve got to go back to the beginning and account for that change.” —Soon Wiley, author of When We Fell Apart