Kuang immigrated to the United States from Guangzhou, China, with her family when she was four years old.[15][16] Her father grew up in Leiyang, in Hunan province, and her mother grew up in Hainan province.[17] Her maternal grandfather fought for Chiang Kai-shek.[17] Her father's family experienced the Japanese occupation of Hunan.[17][18]
Her 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.[23]The Poppy War has received mainly favorable reviews, with Publishers Weekly calling it "a strong and dramatic launch to Kuang's career".[24] In October 2020, her first two books in the Poppy Wars trilogy were included in Time magazine's The 100 Best Fantasy Books of All Time (The Burning God was not available when the article was published).[25][26] 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.[27]
In 2020, she 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.[28]
Poppy War trilogy
Peter Luo's Starlight Media and SA Inc is set to adapt the Poppy War trilogy for television.[29]
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."[35] Publishers Weekly said that "Kuang brings brilliance to this invigorating and complex military fantasy sequel to The Poppy War."[36]
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."[37] The reviewer for Publishers Weekly said that "[t]he result is a satisfying if not happy end to the series."[38]
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.[39][40] In the second week of September 2022, Babel debuted at the top spot on The New York Times Best Seller list for hardcover fiction,[41] but dropped to the ninth spot the following week[42] before disappearing from the list by the end of the month.[43] 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.[44]
In October 2021, Kuang announced that her fifth novel, Yellowface, would be published in 2023.[45] 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".[46] 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."[47]
In the last week of May 2023, Yellowface debuted at the eighth spot on the Los Angeles Times bestseller list for hardcover fiction.[48] In the first week of June 2023, Yellowface debuted at the fifth spot on The New York Times Best Seller list for hardcover fiction.[49] 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."[50] 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."[51]
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".[52] In an interview with The Guardian, Kuang calls the project "nonsense literature".[53] 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.'"[54]
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.[55]
"Against All Odds" in the anthology From a Certain Point of View: 40 stories celebrating 40 years of The Empire Strikes Back (November 2020) ISBN978-0593157749
Non-fiction
"How to Talk to Ghosts" in the 21st issue of Uncanny Magazine (March 6, 2018)[85]
