Rebecca F. Kuang is an award-winning, #1 The New York Times bestselling author of the Poppy War trilogy,  Babel: An Arcane History. Babel, a thematic response to The Secret History and a tonal retort to Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, grapples with student revolutions, colonial resistance, and the use of language and translation as the dominating tool of the British empire. It asks the question, “Can powerful institutions be changed from within, or does revolution always require violence?”

In her most recent novel, Yellowface, young writer Juniper Song becomes an overnight sensation, but she is not who she says she is; she didn’t write the book she claims she wrote, and she is most certainly not Asian American. Yellowface grapples with questions of diversity, racism, and cultural appropriation, as well as the terrifying alienation of social media. It’s a timely, razor-sharp, and eminently readable novel.

A Marshall Scholar, Kuang has a Master in Philosophy in Chinese Studies from Cambridge University and a Master of Sciences in Contemporary Chinese Studies from Oxford University. Kuang is now pursuing a Ph.D. in East Asian Languages and Literatures at Yale University, where she studies diaspora, contemporary Chinese literature, and Asian American literature.