Travis interviews author R.F. Kuang about The Burning God, the final novel in The Poppy War trilogy from Harper Voyager. The series reimagines the Second Sino-Japanese War set in a fantasy analogue of the Song Dynasty following a protagonist who parallels Mao Zedong's rise to power.

Rebecca and Travis discuss her conflicted emotions at saying goodbye to the Poppy War series, revisit her powerful acceptance speech after winning the Astounding award for best new writer, and question the role of fantasy in a world whose problems may demand a more direct response.

About R.F. Kuang:

Rebecca F. Kuang is a Marshall Scholar, Chinese-English translator, and the Astounding Award-winning and Nebula, Locus, and World Fantasy Award nominated author of the Poppy War trilogy. Her work has won the Crawford Award and the Compton Crook Award for Best First Novel. She has an MPhil in Chinese Studies from Cambridge and an MSc in Contemporary Chinese Studies from Oxford; she is now pursuing a PhD in East Asian Languages and Literatures at Yale.

You can find R.F. Kuang on Twitter and Instagram as @kuangrf, or at her website rfkuang.com.

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The blog post accompanying this episode can be found at https://thefantasyinn.com, along with fantasy book reviews, author interviews, and more fantasy content.