R. F. Kuang

R.F. Kuang is an American-Chinese fantasy author known for the Poppy War trilogy and the standalone novel Babel. She won the Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel for Babel, or the Necessity of Violence (2023), which also won the Nebula Award. She is one of the most celebrated young voices in contemporary speculative fiction. Born in China in 1996 and raised in Dallas, Texas, Kuang published The Poppy War when she was twenty-two, while completing her undergraduate degree at Georgetown. The novel, set in a world inspired by twentieth-century Chinese history, was praised for its unflinching depictions of war and trauma. Babel, a novel about translation, colonialism, and the Oxford of the 1830s, became a major bestseller and critical sensation. Kuang holds an MSc from the University of Oxford and a second master's from Cambridge University. She is an outspoken critic of racism in the publishing industry. She lives in New York City.