Nicholas Wang

About

Nicholas Wang is a Taiwanese and Vietnamese American writer of literary fiction based in Los Angeles, where he was born and raised. He grew up on the Westside in public schools and currently resides in Mid-City. His work explores what it feels like to be surrounded by people yet fundamentally alone, the strangeness lurking in ordinary moments, and the split seconds when the world reveals itself as something other than what we thought it was.

Wang earned a degree in Kinesiology, and has spent the years since working odd jobs—from the emergency room to behind the bar—and traveling. He has lived in Chicago, Houston, and San Diego, and wanders abroad as often as he can. These experiences have taught him to notice how people move through their days, and the small moments that reveal something true. His characters exist in the gaps—between connection and isolation, routine and rupture, the life they're living and the one slipping away from them.

He writes primarily short fiction, often blending realism with the magical and the absurd. His stories tend to be set in LA—from tar pits and oceanside piers to under overpasses and apartment bathrooms—where the real people stand and breathe.

Wang has studied at UCLA Extension's Writers' Program and is a member of the Robertson Writers Group.

The Collection

IN GOO is a literary fiction collection of fourteen stories (approximately 50,000 words) set in contemporary urban America, where the surreal breaks into everyday life and ordinary people confront the impossible.

The collection examines how we lose ourselves in the sprawl of modern life—sometimes gradually, sometimes all at once. A man's hand falls off while waiting for the bus. A bartender descends into a restaurant basement and finds himself trapped in an endless staircase. A boy meets a talking spirit on a creekside run. An odd group bands together on a metro line. A homeless man navigates a sweltering day under a freeway while the city ignores his existence. Set against the backdrop of tar pits, freeways, and apartment bathrooms; backyards, oceanside piers, and train cars, these stories capture the magical and surreal embedded in the utterly real.

Moving between stark realism and surreal absurdism, IN GOO explores loneliness, loss, memory, and the feeling of being stuck in the world we live in today. Told with wry humor and a distinct voice, the collection will appeal to readers of Ling Ma, Samanta Schweblin, and Kim Samek—stories that blend the everyday with the uncanny.

Status: Complete manuscript available. Currently seeking representation.

Selected Work

In Goo (~3,000 words)

He had been having a bad week and an even worse year, what with all the numbers going down and all the estimates going up, and decided to take a pause from his regularly televised monotonous capitalistic daily agenda and do something different. Something absolutely absurd. Completely insane. By all definitions, ludicrous. He decided to go for a walk.

A sharply-dressed man escapes his monotonous life for an impromptu walk through Hancock Park, where he encounters the La Brea Tar Pits and a precocious six-year-old who asks questions he can't quite answer. A meditation on being stuck, being alone, and the small moments that remind us we're alive.

Drumstick Nub (~2,500 words)

He had been waiting for the bus when it happened. There was no blood, no pain, and no one to witness it. It had simply fallen off. One moment it was there, attached to the end of his arm, just like always, and the next it was on the ground, beside some withered leaves and bits of litter.

A man's hand falls off without warning while waiting for the bus. As he attempts to navigate his life with this inexplicable loss, the story follows the cascading consequences of a single surreal event. A darkly absurdist exploration of how we lose ourselves, piece by piece.

Omakase Sushi Bar (~5,500 words)

It felt as if I was being sucked into a big, black hole. A total, absolute nothingness that gradually crept over my body, enveloping me like a cold fog. Little by little, I was becoming a part of it. Or, maybe it was becoming part of me. Maybe I was fading away altogether.

A night in Chicago when the power goes out and a bartender descends into the restaurant's basement to find the circuit breaker. What begins as a routine task becomes a surreal journey into an impossible space. Told years later to his cousin over coffee in California, the story explores the fear of being trapped, the unreliability of memory, and the thin line between the real and the unreal.

Parachute, Parachute (~4,000 words)

I hadn't dreamt in a long time. In fact, I couldn't remember the last dream I had. I knew I used to have dreams—at least, periodically, as a girlfriend of mine had once told me that I murmur in my sleep.

Years after a breakup, a man discovers his ex-girlfriend's dream journal—and finds a record of words he spoke while sleeping. A story about the things we fail to say while awake, the complacency that quietly erodes love, and how we learn what we've lost only after it's gone.

Can 'uh Beans (~2,000 words)

It was sweltering. The kind of day where, if you put your head close to the ground, you could see little ripples and waves rising in the air above the pavement. Where you could get a second-degree burn from leaning against a car left in the sun.

William lives under the I-10 freeway with his shopping cart and moves slowly through a Los Angeles that barely registers his existence. On a brutally hot day, he navigates his small world while a stranger's song about beans drifts through the air. A story of invisibility and survival, told with compassion and unflinching clarity.

Let's Connect

Currently seeking representation for IN GOO, a literary fiction collection of fourteen short stories where the surreal breaks into everyday life.

For representation inquiries or to request the full manuscript: