Wordfest welcomes bestselling fantasy phenom R.F. Kuang with her highly anticipated novel Katabasis, a dark academia tour de force drenched in magic, which author Leigh Bardugo calls “a witty, gory, harrowing ride.” Kuang’s oeuvre (including Babel and Yellowface) has established her as a master of storytelling. This can’t-miss conversation starts at 7PM MT and will be hosted by Paula Turcotte. This event includes an audience Q & A and book signing, fueled by Shelf Life Books. You can also place an order for Katabasis—including the deluxe, limited edition featuring stenciled edges, case effects, and illustrated endpapers—and Kuang’s incredible backlist here.
We are grateful to HarperCollins Canada for making it possible to connect you with R.F. Kuang.
Paula Turcotte
Conversation
Audience Q&A
Book Signing
75 minutes. No intermission.
HarperCollins Canada
Rebecca F. Kuang is the #1 New York Times and #1 Sunday Times bestselling author of the Poppy War trilogy, Babel: An Arcane History, and Yellowface, which has sold over a million copies internationally. In 2023 Kuang was named a Time100 Next Phenom. Her work has won the Nebula, Locus, Crawford, and British Book Awards. A Marshall Scholar, 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, where she studies diaspora, contemporary Sinophone literature, and Asian American literature.
Instagram/Threads: @kuangrf
Dante’s Inferno meets Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi in this all-new dark academia fantasy from R. F. Kuang, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Babel and Yellowface, in which two graduate students must put aside their rivalry and journey to Hell to save their professor’s soul—perhaps at the cost of their own.
Katabasis, noun, Ancient Greek: The story of a hero’s descent to the underworld.
Alice Law has only ever had one goal: to become one of the brightest minds in the field of Magick. She has sacrificed everything to make that a reality: her pride, her health, her love life, and most definitely her sanity. All to work with Professor Jacob Grimes at Cambridge, the greatest magician in the world.
Paula Turcotte
Conversation
Audience Q&A
Book Signing
75 minutes. No intermission.
HarperCollins Canada
Paula Turcotte is the Youth Programming Associate at Wordfest. She is a writer and poet, and she holds an MSt in Creative Writing from Oxford. Her debut chapbook of poetry, Permutations, was published in July 2024 by Baseline Press. Her poems have been shortlisted for The Malahat Review’s Far Horizons Award and longlisted in ROOM’s Poetry Contest. Her recent work appears in Canthius, Arc Poetry, and elsewhere.
Website: paulaturcotte.weebly.com
Instagram/Threads: @p.turc
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