"[1] The precursor to FC2, the Fiction Collective, was founded in 1974 by Jonathan Baumbach, Peter Spielberg, B. H. Friedman, Mark Jay Mirsky, Steve Katz, and Ronald Sukenick, among others.

[11] In 1979, Carol Sturm Smith took the reins of Co-Director (acting as president) from Jonathan Baumbach; Raymond Federman succeeded Peter Spielberg.

In 1986, reductions in arts funding enacted by the Reagan administration resulted in denial of the Fiction Collective's NEA grant application.

In 1989, Curtis White, Ronald Sukenick, Mark Leyner, Jonathan Baumbach, B. H. Friedman, and Peter Spielberg decided to reorganize the press, and founded Fiction Collective Two, or FC2 for short.

During the subsequent hearings, FC2 received public support from such writers as Mark Strand, William H. Gass, and Toni Morrison.

Despite the hearings, FC2 continued to publish throughout the 1990s, including several notable titles (Mark Amerika's The Kafka Chronicles, Cris Mazza's Revelation Countdown, and Samuel R. Delany's Hogg among them) under their Avant-Pop imprint, Black Ice Books.

FC2 authors Clarence Major, Gerald Vizenor and Diane Glancy were included in the Norton Anthology of American Literature (fifth edition).

Curtis White, Ricardo Cortez Cruz, Gerald Vizenor, Mark Leyner and Samuel R. Delany were also included in Postmodern American Fiction: A Norton Anthology.