Babel debuted at the first spot on The New York Times Best Seller list, and won the Blackwell's Book of the Year for Fiction in 2022 along with the 2022 Nebula Award for Best Novel.

[7] She attended Georgetown University, majoring in history,[8] attracted by the college's well-known debating team after winning the Tournament of Champions.

[3] While in college, Kuang, aged 19, began writing Poppy War during a gap year in China, where she worked as a debate coach; the book was published shortly before her 22nd birthday.

[5][3][9] Kuang attended Magdalene College, Cambridge as a recipient of a 2018 Marshall Scholarship, where she earned a Master of Philosophy in Chinese studies.

[11] Kuang returned to the United States in the fall of 2020 to pursue a PhD in East Asian Languages and Literatures at Yale University.

[18] In 2020, Kuang wrote a short story in the Star Wars universe called "Against All Odds" about a Rebel Alliance defender on the ice planet Hoth named Dak Ralter.

A reviewer for The Fantasy Hive wrote, "Rebecca Kuang's conclusion to her debut trilogy, The Poppy War, is testament to her growth as a writer; not only is it a fitting close to an ambitious series.

"[30] In May 2021, Kuang announced the August 2022 release of her fourth novel, Babel, or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution, by Harper Voyager.

[35] Kuang's Babel was excluded from consideration for the 2023 Hugo Award along with Chinese Canadian author Xiran Jay Zhao's Iron Widow.

"[42] Writing for the New York Times, award-winning author Amal El-Mohtar wrote that the novel is "a breezy and propulsive read, a satirical literary thriller that's enjoyable and uncomfortable in equal measure.

This book was released in October 2023 and included works by Sofia Samatar, Kristina Ten, Alix E. Harrow, Stephen Graham Jones, Isabel Canas, Linda Raquel Nieves Pérez, Nathan Ballingrud, Theodora Goss, Maria Dong, KT Bryski, Shingai Njeri Kagunda, Susan Palwick, Isabel J. Kim, Samantha Mills, S. L. Huang, MKRNYILGLD, Chris Willrich, Kim Fu, Catherynne M. Valente, and Malka Older.

'"[47] The publisher HarperCollins describes the book as a dark academia fantasy in which "Dante's Inferno meets Susanna Clarke's Piranesi ."

[50] In 2022, Kirkus Reviews[51] and The Washington Post[52] named Babel, or the Necessity of Violence one of the best science fiction and fantasy books of the year.

[56] Kuang was originally scheduled to deliver the 8th annual The J. R. R. Tolkien Lecture on Fantasy Literature at Pembroke College, Oxford in 2020,[94] but it was postponed two years due to the world-wide COVID-19 pandemic.