Rebecca F. Kuang: "Being at the top is very boring, from there you can only go down."

It's easy to envy Rebecca F. Kuang . Her debut, 'The Poppy War,' the beginning of an epic fantasy trilogy, made her a bestselling author at just 22 years old. She has brought fantasy literature onto the English-speaking bestseller lists. She has been nominated for the most important awards in the genre. She has broken labels with her latest novel, ' Yellow ,' and exposed the shadows of the publishing industry. She was born in Guangzhou and grew up in the United States, always glued to books. She just turned 29, is beautiful, intelligent, sweet, and introverted. And on her first official visit to Spain, she was received like a superstar.

—What's it like to be there, so young and so successful?

—After publishing my first book, I went through a difficult time, trying to reconnect with writing without thinking about meeting everyone's expectations. I've worked hard to push away everything that comes with success and have tried to hold on to that adolescent self who knew nothing, who wrote for the pure pleasure of creating.

—Do you believe in meritocracy?

—Of course. Writing techniques are meritocratic; they can be studied and mastered. There's no secret. At the same time, I think there's something innate about it: the instinct to tell stories, to refine an interesting message, to have something to say. And not everyone has that.

—He changes genres and themes, but there's (almost) always magic in his books...

—Because it's fun. I've also written non-speculative fiction. There's no magic in Amarilla. Nor in Taipei Story, the novel that will come out after Katabasis [still without a release date in Spain]. As I grow as a writer, I stop relying exclusively on fantasy as a way to elevate narrative conflicts and I'm better able to detect the magical and captivating in our mundane experiences.

—Fantasy literature has always been considered a minor genre. Do you want to help change that perception?

—Yes, although there are highly respected authors who aren't labeled as fantasy or science fiction writers. Gabriel García Márquez, Borges, Kazuo Ishiguro. The magic in stories doesn't make them less sophisticated. I think it's an absurd and patronizing marketing strategy for readers, telling them which books they'll like and which ones are aimed at more educated and "intelligent" readers.

—Which authors did you grow up with?

—We could be here for hours, but I'll mention one I recently spoke about with some friends: Cornelia Funke. For me, Inkheart is a foundational text because, when I was little, I always escaped into fantastical worlds, and there I discovered a system of magic in which, if you wrote with sufficient complexity and beauty, you could make the words and characters come alive.

—What was he running away from?

—I was a lonely person. I didn't really have any friends. I was brought to the United States when I was 5 years old and didn't know any English. I had a very strong accent and was so afraid of speaking that I suffered from a speech impediment: I would open my mouth and make the right movements, but no sound came out. The speech therapist assured us there was nothing wrong; I just refused to speak up, to make my voice heard. It was difficult, so I read a lot of books.

—In 'Amarilla,' you explore the dark side of the publishing world, how it treats and even exploits minorities. Has that been your experience?

—In my early years, I was always the Chinese-American author, the one who writes Asian fantasies, the one who tackles Chinese history. I was compared to other Chinese-American authors whose styles couldn't be more different. I resist labels. Over the years, I've learned to define myself first and foremost as an artist with complete artistic freedom. It all comes down to craft. The art of becoming better at the simple task of finding the right combination of words to communicate a specific feeling or thought; that's universal. That's above politics.

—Don't you think writing is political?

—Oh, of course. But it is because life is political, and good writing should communicate perspectives about the world that the reader can't imagine for themselves.

—In 'Amarilla,' you ask a key question: who has the right to tell which stories. What's your answer?

—Anyone can tell any story they want. It's very important that we have no limits because, as soon as they exist, we'll have a rigid, boring, and overly correct literary ecosystem. Often, when we're frustrated with a book, it's because it's poorly written, without enough complexity or research.

—June, the protagonist, envies Athena because she's a successful writer, beautiful, part of a minority... How many 'Junes' has she encountered?

—With many. I've been June myself. In all my novels, I distribute different parts of my psyche across different characters. That friendship-rivalry between June and Athena is within me. I go from one extreme to the other, from total insecurity and jealousy to exaggerated pride and self-sufficiency. Unfortunately, I'm almost always on the insecure side.

—Athena acts like a vampire, feeding off the trauma of those around her and transforming it into material for her work. Are you afraid of becoming that?

—Unfortunately, all of us writers hang other people upside down and shake them, hoping something from their experiences will fall out, like loose change. I do this in every conversation I have. If we didn't draw on those interactions, our works would be very narcissistic. Anyway, writing improves when you don't reproduce an event word for word, but find a way to crystallize it, to transform it into art. That invention usually creates enough distance so that no one feels hurt.

—What are you afraid of, then?

—After the pandemic, I developed an obsession with travel. I'm terrified of having a life from a single perspective. Even as a child, the idea of ​​being trapped inside my own skull, unable to experience another person's consciousness, gave me panic attacks.

—What are you dreaming about?

—I haven't written the books I want to write yet. I've never had a literary education, I didn't study English at university, I didn't read all the classics everyone else read. Over time, I've accumulated that knowledge, but I feel there's still a gap. Although I don't want to write my best novel until I'm about to die, because from then on, everything will be downhill.

—Is that the great fear of every writer?

—I think so. You never want to be past your best, and the only way to avoid that is to be constantly dissatisfied with your work and to write something better every time.

—It sounds a little daunting.

—I don't think so. Being at the top is very boring; from there you can only go down; but as you're climbing, you don't know what the horizon is; it's all hope and excitement.