Chinese-American Novelist Yulin Kuang Grew Up Feeling “Shame” Around Sex, But Now She’s Known For Writing Incredible Smut

As a Chinese-New Zealander who grew up with religion, the feeling of shame when it comes to sex is all too familiar. When I speak to Beach Read director and novelist Yulin Kuang, we instantly connected on this topic. The author is known for her incredible smut scenes, with The Cut describing her as taking readers "through to the sweaty, sticky end". It's rather unusual to see a fellow East Asian embrace sexuality in such an unabashed way, and she was surprised by the positive feedback she's had from her peers.

When Kuang sent her book How To End A Love Story to Korean-American YA author Maureen Goo, the response was surprising. "I remember her telling me to see an Asian author write sex scenes like this; she's like, this is very healing. And so that was very flattering," Kuang tells me. "A lot of the [Asian American books] I've read that get elevated to the point of best seller status, they can feel very deep and thought-provoking and all of these things. And I think I need to be all of those things too, [but] I guess what I'm here to do is represent our horny side as well. We can be sad, and deep, and horny, as well."

Although the author started out by writing fanfiction on fanfiction.net as a teenager, she actually stuck to G-rated fics. She wasn't at a point in her life to tackle smut, so being known for her sex scenes now is actually quite gratifying. "The very first sex scene I wrote was kind of a challenge to myself," she recalls. "[When I was younger], I was kind of afraid to talk about sex, even though I was reading smut, absolutely I was, but I was too embarrassed to write about it, and that was under a relative pseudonym."

As a child, she moved from China to Wichita, Kansas, where her family dabbled in religion. If you've ever experienced religious guilt, it's not something you can easily shake. So, for the author to find her voice in this romance genre is particularly impressive. "There was a lot of shame-based discussion around sex as a result. So I was very embarrassed, and I couldn't really talk about [sex] and it wasn't really encouraged growing up," Kuang notes.

In a way, writing the especially horny scenes in How To End A Story was a way for Kuang to heal the guilt and shame around sex she had been carrying with her since she was younger. "In adulthood, when I sat down to write this book... it was kind of a chance to do a lot of digging on myself," she says. "I knew that I had always loved reading really horny books and like, really horny fanfic, and I had never dared to write it. And so it was kind of... I kept daring myself to go further, a little bit [more], and it was very rewarding. I enjoyed it."

The author would love to see her book be adapted into a limited series, but for now, she's concentrating on her next Emily Henry project. She's writing and directing Beach Read, which stars Bridgerton's Phoebe Dynevor.

Hopefully, Kuang's novel will be next, and we'll see her steamy scenes come alive on our TV screens.