Kuang began writing the Poppy War trilogy at 19, during a year off from her studies in Chinese history at Georgetown University. She was in Beijing, teaching students how to debate during the day, and wanted a way to pass the time in the evenings. That year, she began learning more about her family history. Kuang’s grandparents lived through the... See more

“I get bored really easily,” Kuang says, an array of books on the shelf behind her, next to what looks like a fluffy toy cat. “I’m never going to write a project in the same genre twice, because there are just too many forms of storytelling that I want to experiment with, and not enough years in my life.”

Kuang first made her name with the Poppy War trilogy, an award-winning fantasy series that explores the idea, as she puts it, “what if Mao had been a teenage girl?” Set in a country resembling medieval-era China, it tells the story of Rin, an ambitious girl from the southern peasantry who enters the nation’s most prestigious military academy. Many... See more

She considered exploring her family history through biography but realised that would have involved making people relive their pain. Fantasy, however, gives the mind more space to roam, creating a familiar yet distant universe with its own logic, hierarchies and possibilities. “I’ve met a lot of readers who thought reading the trilogy was kind of a... See more

“As long as I’m passionately curious about a topic, at least one other person is going to follow me down that rabbit hole,” she rationalises. If it is difficult to tell what she’s going to do next, then that is the point, she says. “It’s only going to get weirder from here.”

“We’re storytellers, and the point of storytelling is, among other things, to imagine outside of your lived experience and empathise with people who are not you, and to ideally write truthfully, and with compassion, a whole range of characters,” she continues. “Otherwise all we could ever publish are memoirs and autobiographies and nobody wants... See more

Reviewers then debate June’s right to tell the story, echoing familiar conversations on whether authors should write about characters and histories outside their own race or lived experiences. In Yellowface, that initial query spirals into increasingly outlandish backlashes, and everything that was once coherent and proportionate disappears under a... See more