R. F. Kuang immigrated to the United States from Guangzhou, China in 2000. She now studies Asian history at Georgetown University, where her research focuses on Chinese military strategy, collective trauma, and war memorials. She graduated from Odyssey Writing Workshop in 2016 and attended the CSSF Novel Writing Workshop in 2017. Her debut novel, The Poppy War, is the first installment in a trilogy that grapples with drugs, shamanism, and China's bloody twentieth century.