Open Minds Book Series 2023-2024

Rebecca F. Kuang (born May 29, 1996) is an American fantasy novelist.  Her previous novels include The Poppy War, The Dragon Republic, The Burning God, and Babel: or the Necessity of Violence.  

Her work has won the Nebula, Locus, Crawford, and British Book Awards. A Marshall Scholar, she has an MPhil in Chinese Studies from Cambridge and an MSc in Contemporary Chinese Studies from Oxford. She is now pursuing a PhD in East Asian Languages and Literatures at Yale, where she studies diaspora, contemporary Sinophone literature, and Asian American literature.

"Kuang"  rhymes with “song," not “bang.”

(Sources: Wikipedia and Official Press Bio.)

• She Wrote a Blistering Satire About Publishing. The Publishing Industry Loves It. (New York Times)
• How R. F. Kuang turned every recent book scandal into the satirical thriller ‘Yellowface’ (The Los Angeles Times)
• 'Yellowface' explores cultural appropriation in publishing via an unlikeable narrator (NPR, All Things Considered)

• When White Poets Pretend to Be Asian (The New Yorker)
• The Diversity Elevator: On R. F. Kuang’s “Yellowface” (The Cleveland Review of Books)
• Yi-Fen Chou Is a Real Person, & Everything Else Circling 'The Bees' (The Poetry Foundation)

• The American Dirt Controversy: Lessons for Writers on Getting Cultures Right (Bostonia)