R. F. Kuang, International Bestselling Author 14.05.26

Em: So, I thought that I would start by telling you my name and where my name comes from. So, my name is Emily Christine Miller-Sharma and the Miller in my last name is my bio dad. He lives in Seattle. His family came to the States through Montana, maybe like five generations ago. And Sharma is technically my stepdad, but he's my dad. He is from India, and he moved to New Zealand when he was 15. And then Christine, my middle name is my mum's name, and Emily is my great grandmother's name on my bio data side. And tell me about your names, where they're from.

Rebecca: My name is Rebecca Kuang, and Kuang is my dad's family name. I publish under R. F. Kuang and F my middle initial. I don't actually have a middle name. That's not something you'll meet a lot of. Chinese immigrants don't have a legal middle name, because that's just not something that we do, but it's the first letter of my mother's maiden name, so I published under it to sort of honour that side of the family. And Rebecca, it's just sort of a name they chose randomly out of the Bible. But my name in Chinese is Huang Ling Xiu, which my dad chose.

Em: And what does that mean?

Rebecca: It sort of means agile and elegant. Yeah, Ling Xiu definitely came first, and Rebecca was the afterthought.

Em: I'm not sure if you're familiar with the concept of a pepeha or a mihi. You will learn about it as you spend a bit more time in New Zealand, in particular with tangata whenua, which translates literally to people of the land. Essentially, the idea of a pepeha is that you share your mountain, your river, your tribe, with each other to see where you, there might be a connection, and you can see how the two or the many might fit together.

Rebecca: Yeah, that's really gorgeous.

Em: It is so nice, and I find it to be quite a good way to connect. So, for you, what does it feel like in your world at the moment?

Rebecca: I would say a writer's life is living between two extremes. The first, which I'm definitely more comfortable in, is just being alone all day, really at my writing desk and having that very private relationship to the manuscript. On those days, you know, they're very solitary and peaceful. I go on long walks and runs. I think about the words. I come back and just dedicate myself to my craft all day. But then on the flip side, I'm really lucky to get to do. I'm still getting used to enjoying all the public-facing stuff, the festivals, the travel. And this is my first time in New Zealand, my second day in New Zealand. So I'm just walking around, soaking it all in. We'll go on a lot of hikes later. I'm just like doing everything I can to get the maximum festival experience and this is a part of it.

Em: Wow. I'm really grateful to be part of it. This is a question that I've been asking, like reading your books. I really want to know what you think is the purpose of human life?

Rebecca: Oh gosh. Like, if I think about Rin in Poppy Wars?

Em:There's just something to me about why she's doing this. What is the purpose? What is she aiming for? There are people who are struggling, there are people who are oppressing those who are struggling, but they're also struggling, and it's sort of like, what's the purpose?

Rebecca: That's a really big question. I guess I can only answer a sort of journey that I've been on. Education was a really big focus when I was growing up. Doing well in school, being admitted to good institutions, getting scholarships so that you can be in those places. And when you're a teenager, that's enough, right? Jumping through the next hoop, being accepted into the next place. That was all that drove me up through middle school, high school, and then I got to college. And now I'm wondering what I'm going to do with the rest of my life. I had to make a transition from winning fellowships, winning prizes, getting grants just for the sake of doing that because it had been so socially encoded that that sort of achievement was enough. And well, what does it all add up to? What kind of person am I? It's a different relationship with my art where I am thinking more carefully about how I use all of that education and create something to send it back out into the world to help people who need to see themselves represented. So moving from the external validation and just being on the pipeline to a more sacred and personal relationship with the art has been, I guess, the journey of my 20s.

Em: Talking about that and the trajectory of working really hard, it makes me think about your characters. They work so hard to develop their mastery and sometimes at great personal or physical cost. I'm interested to know from you as a person, how you see that or how you feel about that approach to knowledge acquisition?

Rebecca: I think that's a fantastic question. Certainly, Rin, the protagonist of the Poppy Wars Trilogy, and Robin, the protagonist of Fable, and Alice and Peter, the main characters of the Katabasis, are fighting to stay within an institution, sort of as a survival mechanism. For Rin and Robin, being at the synagogue in Auschwitz, it's literally life or death. And the twist in all of these books is realising that maybe their talents aren't being used for good reasons. Maybe they're being exploited by the institutions. Maybe they're not valued as human beings, and obviously, I didn't have that experience. I didn't go to Oxford in the 1830s but I did have the experience of working so hard so that I could get that scholarship, so I could be in that place and feel secure. I think financial security is something that a lot of immigrant children think about all the time and you don't get to be in those places without thinking all the time about what is the price tag, what does it cost me to get here, how can I be here so that it's not a burden on my family and you're so focused on just feeling safe and having that lockdown that you don't ask like what's the purpose of this knowledge acquisition what kind of citizen am I actually being molded into.

Rebecca: We're just so focused on creating a good life for ourselves that we never ask what could a different world look like. Who gets access to these institutions? And who becomes complacent with the way things currently are because things happen to have worked out really well for them. And I think we all have an obligation not to just think of ourselves as the lucky exceptions, but rather, how do I send the ladder back down? How do I use the resources that are miraculously available to me to open doors for other people? When you think about social causes that you really care about, the way to make a difference in them is some form of personal sacrifice. You're giving up something, whether that is time, your labour, your reputation, your resources, your money, but you need to give something up. There is no form of activism where you just put some pretty words on the internet, walk away, and feel like a good person; that's just moral comfort to yourself. So when I feel really bad about the world, I look at not just the people who are being very loud about it, but I look at people who are organising efforts where you can dedicate time, attention, labour, resources, money, and I ask what I can contribute towards that?

Em: Thinking about what you were saying about the current reality, what is a way that you use media, either reading, listening, or watching, to help you understand it? Because it's information overload. Some of it might be true or not. What are some ways that you actually engage with that reality in a way which is helpful or positive?

Rebecca: Well, I'd say not social media doom scrolling. I am really offline. I haven't been on social media in a meaningful way in a long time. I pay for good investigative journalism. I read long-form pieces. I read history books. I read the work of people who aren't just tossing a hot take out there, but spend a lot of time carefully considering an issue, talking to people involved, like investigating the facts and have presented them in a really rigorous way.

Em: I'm interested to know from either perspective how you engage with AI?

Rebecca: There's a journalist named Karen Hao. She has an amazing book out called Empires of AI, which is fantastic. The argument is not just that Empire is a good metaphor for thinking about how the AI industry works, but also in terms of the actual resources being exploited, in terms of the people, the natural resources, all the energy that goes into AI, they fall very cleanly on the structures created by old versions of Empire. I think of AI like it's a tool. Tools by themselves are neutral, the same way that silver working is neutral. But the question is, who does it benefit? Who does the money flow towards? Who is being exploited? My favourite part of her book is that she doesn't write off all AI as awful, evil, or that we should never use it. The book concludes with a case study of how a lot of Maori language activists were able to use AI to do a lot of recording and processing as a way to preserve the language, with the permission of the community. It can be magical. There are beautiful ways to use it.

Em: In your dream state, obviously acknowledging the reality of where we are now, what would the literary industry be?

Rebecca: I think literary institutions and all the related institutions like humanities departments and libraries are defenders, they're bastions of that sort of old school close reading, that help us feel connected to each other. I think readers really want this. Nobody wants to read AI produced novels. We all read because we want to see what the world looks like from somebody else's perspective. When we read to step outside of ourselves and that's something that only another human experience can give us.

Em: My dad actually died in December. I actually just couldn't handle it. But obviously, I don't know what happens after, and I'm interested to know what you think happens when we die?

Rebecca: Well, first of all, I'm really sorry for your loss. We've lost a few people in my family over the last few years, my grandmother in California passed away at the start of the year. So, I also entered this year thinking about loss, thinking about how human life is so precious and short. My thinking on this is really guided by a book called 'This Life' by a scholar named Martin Hagglund. He's basically arguing against visions of the afterlife, and visions of heaven where we are ourselves eternally and we just sort of hang out and eat cake with our friends. I think this is an afterlife that a lot of us crave, right? It's nice to think you might be reunited with your loved ones, and you just sort of get to hang out. But Hagglund says that sort of immortal existence would actually be terrible. If you couldn't die, if there were no stakes, if you couldn't grow, you'd just be staring down this bleak expanse in eternity with no change, and that's awful. He says rather than dreaming of eternity, we should realise that the thing that generates value in this life is the fact that it's short and we don't have it forever. It's a reason to treasure those who are around us now and to make the most of every fleeting moment.

Em: I've never really thought about dying or living for eternity like that. Like there's nothing at stake.

Em: Would you write a straight-up romance? Like, please?

Rebecca: I'm working on it. It's a really fascinating genre to me. I think it opens a lot of interesting questions. It's something I'm tinkering around with right now.

Em: I am really happy about that. How responsible do you feel for treating your characters well? And what does that actually even mean to you?

Rebecca: They're not real people. What I always teach my creative writing students is that we have this impulse to make things safe and easy for our characters because we like for our lives to be safe and easy. But then the story's not interesting. Fiction exists as this realm where you get pushed to the extremes and consider all the circumstances which, hopefully, you personally will never have to go through.

Em: I like that they don't exist. They're like your little dolls, you can do what you want to them...

Em: Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, what are you feeling most buzzed about?

Rebecca: Um, I mean, I get the most time in Auckland. And I love the outdoors. I love hiking. I love going on long runs. I'm just excited to be alone with the water and the hills, and oh, the wine tastings. Last night, I was just like, I want a really good glass of a New Zealand white, and they were like, " You're gonna have to be more specific than that." But it was a wonderful Sauvignon Blanc. So I'm excited for some more wine while I'm here.

Em: Are there any writers that you're interested in seeing speak at the festival?

Rebecca: So my friend Carrie McNerney, who is a scholar who works in AI, is chairing Karen Hao's conversation about Empire and AI, and that's on Saturday.

Em: So I brought like a ten-ticket pass, and I've got one more ticket, so I'll try see that.

Rebecca: I'm excited for that. I really enjoyed Patrick Radden Keefe's new book, London Falling, but his stuff might be all sold out.

Em: Actually, one suggestion that I have for you is a man called Tāme Iti. He's a really incredible activist, he's Maori and based in essentially the central North Island. If your schedule allows, I think he's on Saturday evening, 7:00 to 8:00, I would recommend.

Rebecca: Really cool. Thank you.

Em: I really enjoyed this chat.

Rebecca: So did I, and thank you for those recommendations. I really appreciate it.

Em: Well, thank you.

Rebecca: Thank you so much