Swipe for the 1st day of class to the last + some of the outcome from it all 💗🙏✨
Thank you so much to @kuangrf for this very special partnership to offer an incredible learning & fundraising opportunity. Thank you for designing an incredible series with the Fundamentals of Narrative Craft, for all your time & effort in sharing your wealth of knowledge & skills, for the patience & grace as I learned yet another first with you in hosting a longer term, high-impact seminar series & for agreeing to do it all with 100% of proceeds going to supporting the shop’s operating costs + the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund on top of it all. Cheers to all the future students you will teach & inspire, we are all very lucky to have you!
Thank you to the wonderful cohort who broke Narrative’s registration link by selling out the entire 8 seminar course in less than 30 minutes of launch 😅! And for showing up over these amazing last few months of Tuesdays with us, holding this space together & ready to lock-in for a packed hour. I hope it’s been as special of an experience for you as it has been to watch you find & build community with one another! PS finding out that the group chat is called “The Narrators” with the shop’s little n logo is forever going to be one of my favorite things 😭🥹.
Thank you to all for helping raise funds for @thepcrf through this writing course. This work is an honor & I am so grateful to get to do something that means so much with you. Our Narrative’s are all woven together whether we want them to be or not & it’s up to us to use the power in our choices to take care of each other. Thank you for showing that we can make a difference together.
Shoutout to our special guests who kept me company in the back for a few sessions @gracedli@shifantasy & b, to @jfkuang for capturing it beautifully in a previous post & the last slide, & to @lupine_flower_company for creating the gorgeous thank you bouquet for our one & only, Professor Kuang.
Here’s to continuing to put our little rectangle of the world to great use together! Narrative event calendars will be ramping back up very, very soon 🥰
i wrote about being bad at languages, how the humiliation of language lessons can make us better people, and three novels + one monograph i really like 🥰🥰
overwhelmed with joy meeting @andyweirofficial at bookcon… amaze amaze amaze!!! i love project hail mary soooo much, every bit of grace and rocky learning one another’s language makes me giggle and i’m a teacher, so the ending when all the little eridian hands went up made me weep!! what a lovely way to wrap up bookcon. thanks nyc ❤️❤️❤️
✨ Introducing the Deluxe Limited Edition of Taipei Story featuring gorgeous stenciled edges ✨
This limited edition is a labor of love, and we hope it finds a special place on your shelves. Also, signed copies are back in stock on BN.com, but it’s a limited quantity so make sure to pre-order when you can. Let’s cry a little, giggle a lot, and remember the ones we love.
i’m still over the moon at the stunning work that @whooli.chen and the US/UK art teams at Harper did on the TAIPEI STORY covers…in a world of instant overwhelming content it’s a true luxury to see artists taking their time, making each design choice with such intentionality, care, and love for the story and its setting. and i felt so listened to throughout the design process (even when it meant going back and forth for weeks and being super annoying about the wrong color choice and then changing my mind im SORRY!) every book is the product of many talented artists and i am so grateful for the teams i get to work with ❤️
I’m so happy to share the covers of TAIPEI STORY, beautifully illustrated by @whooli.chen ❤️
I began writing Taipei Story several years ago after my grandfather died. His death hit me particularly hard because I was studying at a Chinese language program at the time. I began learning Chinese in college because I hoped to reconnect with my extended family – to sit with them and learn their stories. I deferred those conversations for so long because I was embarrassed of how I sounded in Chinese: halting, childish, immature. I was waiting until the day when I was perfectly fluent – a day that would never come. Now he’s gone, and I can only ask my questions to empty air.
So I wrote a book that denies the diaspora fantasy of fluency, homecoming, and reconnection. Instead I’ve lingered in the messy bits – the hilarity of mistranslation, the humiliation of getting it all wrong. Sometimes all we can do is muddle through the fog of language to tell our loved ones that we love them, we’re listening, and we care. That will have to be enough. There was a time when I felt near catatonic with grief, and it still doesn’t feel real that we’re here on the other side with this book to remember him by.
It’ll be out in September, and I’ve put all the preorder links in my bio ❤️ I hope this will be the book for you if you’ve lost someone, if you’re oceans apart from your family, if you feel like you’re not enough. I guess in 2026 we are crying a lot… but giggling through the tears, I hope?
From the literary phenomenon Rebecca F. Kuang comes her most personal novel yet.
Taipei Story.
A brilliant and moving exploration of identity and language, love and grief.
More news will be coming on Taipei Story soon…
me and my sis photographed by my bro ❤️❤️❤️ happy LNY from the Kuangs!!! 🧧🧧🧧🐴🐴🐴 this year is all about family for me. treasure what we have and tell your people you love them ❤️
