Kevin Nguyen’s Year in Brilliant Ideas

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Years in Review

3 min readDec 24, 2015

I. The Oyster Review (RIP)

(I wrote one of these year-end pieces in 2014, where I spent a lot of time saying goodbye to things. And in 2015, I guess I am doing that again. ALL OF THIS HAS HAPPENED BEFORE AND WILL HAPPEN AGAIN.)

The Oyster Review, a literary publication I was lucky enough to launch, was acquired earlier this year as part of a deal between Google and Oyster. Which was pretty neat and flattering! But it also meant the end of the Review. In less than a year, we established The Oyster Review as a meaningful voice in the lit world. (Also traffic was really good!) So here are a few pieces I am very proud to have published:

Since I never gave The Oyster Review a proper goodbye, I’d like to thank a few people: Kate Welsh for editing and writing; Damien Correll, Willem Van Lancker, and Brian Mitchell for designing it; Vivek Patel for literally building it; Kyle Chayka for his content/cheerleading; all of the freelance writers and illustrators who contributed; and everyone that continues to carry around an Oyster Review tote bag.

II. Cat Is Art Spelled Wrong

The best (and longest) thing I wrote in 2015 was an essay for Cat Is Art Spelled Wrong, an anthology about cat videos published by Coffee House Press. My piece is ~4,000 words about my time working at I Can Has Cheezburger right after college and the strangely terrible/pretentious reality TV show based on the office. (Thanks to Caroline Casey for asking me to contribute and for editing the book.) You should buy the book and read the essay! But if you’re lazy, read the shorter adaptation of it I wrote for The Awl.

No but seriously go buy it.

III. Grantland (RIP)

Four years ago, I was shopping around a review of 1Q84, but I had very little luck finding a home for it since most book publications had a white man assigned to it months in advance of its release. It was a long shot, but I sent the piece to my favorite new site, Grantland, even though they rarely covered books. At the time I had very few bylines, and I was completely surprised when it was accepted. A few months later, I pitched a monthly book review column. I was even more surprised when they accepted that too.

The column really helped establish my career as a book reviewer. Grantland always gave me a lot of freedom — more than I would have writing about books anywhere else. This was really the magic of Grantland, and it’s why I miss it so much, not just as a contributor, but as a daily reader. Many thanks to Mark Lisanti for editing me all those years.

I stopped doing my column in April, but the best one I wrote in 2015 was about Kazuo Ishiguro The Buried Giant and Laura van den Berg’s Find Me (two of the year’s most underrated novels).

IV. The New Republic

Thanks to Bijan Stephen for letting me write about videogames — both of which turned out really well. Here’s my piece on the year’s best game, Car Soccer, and one I wrote comparing Hideo Kojima to Jonathan Franzen, which angered one Metafilter user enough to ask, “Has Kevin Nguyen ever watched Japanese animes?”

V. Loose Ends

For Midnight Breakfast, I wrote about taking my younger sister to a Belle and Sebastian concert.

I eulogized Rdio, the music app for annoying men.

I did a little bit of radio this year. My two favorites: talking to NPR’s On Point about my favorite books of the summer and explaining my theory that The Bachelorette is great science fiction on Here To Make Friends.

Thanks to Brooklyn Magazine for including me on their 30 Under 30 list. My mom was thrilled!