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R.F. Kuang is a Chinese-American fantasy writer born in 1996. She immigrated to the United States from Guangzhou, China in 2000. Her debut novel The Poppy War, a Chinese military fantasy, was published by Harper Voyager in 2018 and is the first book in a planned trilogy. The Poppy War has received mainly favorite reviews, with Publishers Weekly calling it “a strong and dramatic launch to Kuang’s career”.

The Poppy War
The Poppy War, a grimdark fantasy, draws its plot and politics from mid-20th-century China. Harper Voyager’s editorial director David Pomerico acquired the novel after a heated auction on Kuang’s 20th birthday. The novel centers on a poor orphan Rin who trains in secret to test into Sinegard Academy. Grounded in the real-world history of Chinese wars and opium addiction, The Poppy War is a dark and fatalistic tale of warfare. . Rin must choose between obeying the advice of her lore master, or using her shamanic power to unleash destruction. Kuang wrote The Poppy War while teaching debate in China and graduated with a degree in Chinese History from Georgetown University a few days after its release. Her studies in Chinese military strategy and collective trauma inspired her to write the novel. She said, “I chose to write a fantasy reinterpretation of China's twentieth century, because that was the kind of story I wasn't finding on bookshelves.”

Personal Life
Kuang graduated from the Odyssey Writing Workshop in 2016 and attended the CSSF Novel Writing Workshop in 2017. She will pursue a graduate degree at the University of Cambridge as a recipient of the Marshall Scholarship. As of May 2018, she has stated that the draft of her second book is finished.