Most days, after she has been tucked into bed by our mother, my nine-year-old sister’s eyes fly open, sparkling with mischief. She immediately starts pleading with me to let her stay up late and “do time-spend” with her. This “time-spend” usually means talking, playing games on Roblox or watching short films on YouTube. Some nights, she asks me to tell her stories with specific instructions to “do the voices, please”. So I can’t help but smile when RF Kuang tells me that she, too, is an elder sister who first began coming up with stories to tell her little sister at bedtime. “My first experiences with world-building were late at night,” says the bestselling author. “My sister and I shared a bedroom, and it was my job to help put her to sleep. I’ve always loved coming up with fictional worlds, characters and imaginary friends. The coolest part is that I now get to do it as a profession.”
Kuang is what Gen Z likes to refer to as ‘disgustingly educated’: a Marshall Scholar who has studied at Oxford, is currently finishing her PhD at Yale and is an award-winning author, having published six books in her 20s, with more on the way. And she’s only 30. When we chat over Zoom, she is loquacious about her experiences reading Le Guin and Goethe and curious about my recent under takings of Márquez and Dostoevsky. Kuang tells me how she spends hours researching Brahms, Beethoven and Wagner for her next book and also finds time to tend to her obsessions: Warrior Cats and Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, which she mentions is her current Roman Empire. “It’s great that so many classicists are writing accessible pop-culture pieces because laypersons like me, who don’t have a background in classics, can join in the fun.”
Over our hour-long conversation, I realise that the Chinese American author’s definition of fun differs from most people’s. Kuang’s eyes light up whenever a niche subject is broached. Her new novel, Taipei Story (HarperCollins Publishers India), is not yet out, but she is already working on her next, spanning five different historical periods that send her down various research rabbit holes. Kuang is only too happy to burrow. “I’m reading military manuals and diaries from the front line, and just trying to get my hands on every monograph that might be related so I can paint as rich and interesting a picture of that environment as possible.”
When she’s not writing her multi-timeline novel, she’s teaching, which Kuang declares is her most necessary and fulfilling work. “I love teaching, that’s my main identity right now. No matter where I reach in my writing career, I’m going to keep teaching my classes,” says the Yellowface author, currently a professor of creative writing at the College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts. “The topics I teach—literature, the humanities, creative writing—are important, not just to help somebody lead a fulfilling existence but also participate in a democracy and be somebody who can care about others.”
