R. F. Kuang

Rebecca F. Kuang (born May 29, 1996) is an American fantasy novelist. Her first novel, The Poppy War, was released in 2018, followed by the sequels The Dragon Republic in 2019, and The Burning God in 2020. Kuang released a stand-alone novel, Babel, or the Necessity of Violence in 2022. Her latest release is Yellowface, a satirical novel which was published in 2023. Kuang holds graduate degrees in Sinology from Magdalene College, Cambridge, and University College, Oxford, and is currently pursuing a PhD at Yale University.

Kuang has received a number of accolades as an author. Babel debuted at the first spot on The New York Times Best Seller list, and won the Blackwell's Book of the Year for Fiction in 2022 along with the 2022 Nebula Award for Best Novel. In addition, Kuang has won the Compton Crook Award, the Crawford Award, and the 2020 Astounding Award for Best New Writer, and has been a finalist for the Nebula, Locus, World Fantasy, Kitschies, and British Fantasy awards for The Poppy War.

Early life and education
Kuang was born May 29, 1996, in Guangzhou. She immigrated to the United States with her family when she was four years old. Her father grew up in Leiyang, in Hunan province, and her mother grew up in Hainan province. Her maternal grandfather fought for Chiang Kai-shek. Her father's family experienced the Japanese occupation of Hunan.

Kuang grew up in Dallas, Texas and graduated from Greenhill School in 2013. She attended Georgetown University, majoring in history, attracted by the college's well-known debating team after winning the Tournament of Champions. While in college, Kuang, aged 19, began writing Poppy War during a gap year in China, where she worked as a debate coach; the book was published shortly before her 22nd birthday. Kuang graduated from the Odyssey Writing Workshop in 2016 and attended the CSSF Novel Writing Workshop in 2017. She graduated from Georgetown's School of Foreign Service in June 2018. She spent the summer after graduation coaching a debate camp in Colorado.

Kuang attended Magdalene College, Cambridge as a recipient of a 2018 Marshall Scholarship, where she earned a Master of Philosophy in Chinese studies. The following academic year, she studied at University College, Oxford and received an MSc in Contemporary Chinese Studies. Kuang returned to the United States in the fall of 2020 to pursue a PhD in East Asian Languages and Literatures at Yale University.

Literary works
Kuang's debut novel The Poppy War, a Chinese military fantasy, was published by Harper Voyager in 2018 and is the first book in the Poppy War trilogy. The Poppy War has received mainly favorable reviews, with Publishers Weekly calling it "a strong and dramatic launch to Kuang's career". In October 2020, the first two books in the Poppy War trilogy were included in Time magazine's list of the 100 best fantasy books of all time. In December 2020, Starlight Media, the U.S. film subsidiary of China-based Starlight Culture Entertainment Group, optioned the rights to adapt Kuang's Poppy Wars trilogy for television.

In 2020, Kuang wrote a short story in the Star Wars universe called "Against All Odds" about a Rebel Alliance defender on the ice planet Hoth named Dak Ralter. It was published in the anthology From a Certain Point of View: 40 Stories celebrating 40 years of The Empire Strikes Back.

Poppy War trilogy
Peter Luo's Starlight Media and SA Inc is set to adapt the Poppy War trilogy for television.

The Poppy War
The Poppy War, a grimdark fantasy, draws its plot and politics from mid-20th-century China, with the conflict in the novel based on the Second Sino-Japanese War, and an atmosphere inspired by the Song dynasty. The Poppy War was nominated for the 2019 World Fantasy Award for Best Novel.

The Dragon Republic
Released in 2019, The Dragon Republic is the sequel to The Poppy War. The Nikan Empire begins to fall apart due to infighting and the Hesperians return. The reviewer for Fantasy Book Review wrote, "Kuang excels at wreaking emotional havoc while delivering a powerful meditation on war and survival." Publishers Weekly said that "Kuang brings brilliance to this invigorating and complex military fantasy sequel to The Poppy War."

The Burning God
Released in 2020, The Burning God is the sequel to The Dragon Republic and the conclusion to the Poppy Wars series. Rin fights the forces that have torn her country apart into a civil war. A reviewer for The Fantasy Hive wrote, "Rebecca Kuang's conclusion to her debut trilogy, The Poppy War, is testament to her growth as a writer; not only is it a fitting close to an ambitious series." The reviewer for Publishers Weekly said that "[t]he result is a satisfying if not happy end to the series."

Babel
In May 2021, Kuang announced the August 2022 release of her fourth novel, Babel, or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution, by Harper Voyager. Babel is set in 1830s England. In the second week of September 2022, Babel debuted at the top spot on The New York Times Best Seller list for hardcover fiction, but dropped to the ninth spot the following week before disappearing from the list by the end of the month. Kuang's Babel was excluded from consideration for the 2023 Hugo Award along with Chinese Canadian author Xiran Jay Zhao's Iron Widow. The awards ceremony that year was held in Chengdu, China, and leaked emails later revealed that an administrator had recommended that books whose content might prove controversial in China be excluded from the list of nominees.

Yellowface
In October 2021, Kuang announced that her fifth novel, Yellowface, would be published in 2023. Publisher William Morrow and Company stated in a press release that Yellowface follows "a white author who steals an unpublished manuscript, written by a more successful Asian American novelist who died in a freak accident, and publishes it as her own". The title of the novel, Yellowface, refers to the film industry practice of yellowface, in which white actors are used to portray Asian characters, analogously to blackface, in which white actors use makeup to portray black or African characters. This book is Kuang's first foray into the literary fiction genre. Writing in the "Acknowledgement" section of the book, Kuang considers her book a "horror story about loneliness in a fiercely competitive industry."

In the last week of May 2023, Yellowface debuted at the eighth spot on the Los Angeles Times bestseller list for hardcover fiction. In the first week of June 2023, Yellowface debuted at the fifth spot on The New York Times Best Seller list for hardcover fiction. The reviewer for NPR called the book "a well-executed, gripping, fast-paced novel about the nuances of the publishing world when an author is desperate enough to do anything for success." Writing for the New York Times, award-winning author Amal El-Mohtar wrote that the novel is "a breezy and propulsive read, a satirical literary thriller that's enjoyable and uncomfortable in equal measure."

Katabasis
In February 2023, Kuang reported that while working on her doctoral degree at Yale, she is also working on her sixth novel, a fantasy about two magical PhD students as they travel to Hell "to rescue the soul of their advisers so that they can write their job recommendation letters". In an interview with The Guardian, Kuang calls the project "nonsense literature". During a November 2023 book promotion tour at the Brattle Theatre near Harvard University, Kuang describe her writing her upcoming book that "... it started as this cute, silly adventure novel about like, 'Haha, academia is hell.' And then I was writing it and I was like, 'Oh, no, academia is hell.'"

Future titles
In April 2023, she also announced that two additional books had been acquired by HarperCollins, a "historical novel and a fantasy," neither of which are Katabasis.

Awards and honors
In 2018, Barnes & Noble included The Poppy War on their list of Favorite Science Fiction & Fantasy Books of 2018.

In 2022, Kirkus Reviews  and The Washington Post named Babel, or the Necessity of Violence one of the best science fiction and fantasy books of the year. Amazon, NPR, and Barnes & Noble named it one of the best books of the year, regardless of genre.

In 2023, Kuang appeared on the Time 100 Next list.

Poppy War series

 * The Poppy War (May 2018), ISBN 978-0062662569
 * The Dragon Republic (August 2019), ISBN 978-0062662637
 * The Burning God (November 2020), ISBN 978-0062662620
 * The Drowning Faith (November 2020), a collection of free short stories set in The Poppy War Trilogy

Other novels

 * Babel, or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution (August 2022), ISBN 978-0063021440
 * Yellowface (May 2023), ISBN 978-0063250833
 * Katabasis (August 2025), ISBN 978-0063021471

Short stories

 * "The Nine Curves River" in the anthology The Book of Dragons (July 2020); edited by Jonathan Strahan ISBN 978-0062877161 (story read by LeVar Burton via LeVar Burton Reads)
 * "Against All Odds" in the anthology From a Certain Point of View: 40 stories celebrating 40 years of The Empire Strikes Back (November 2020) ISBN 978-0593157749

Non-fiction

 * "How to Talk to Ghosts" in the 21st issue of Uncanny Magazine (March 6, 2018)

Academic lectures and symposia
Kuang was originally scheduled to deliver the 8th annual J.R.R. Tolkien Lecture on Fantasy Literature at Pembroke College, Oxford in 2020, but it was postponed two years due to the world-wide COVID-19 pandemic. In the interim, she participated in a virtual seminar. Kuang delivered the Tolkien Lecture in person on May 23, 2022.


 * (includes reading list of topics mentioned in the symposium)