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From Runways to Bookshelves: Kim Chi’s Next Chapter in Queer Storytelling
READ TIME: 3 MIN.
In a new phase of her career, drag artist and beauty entrepreneur Kim Chi has stepped into publishing with the release of two books that fuse her love of food, fantasy aesthetics, and queer camp storytelling. Best known globally as a finalist on season 8 of RuPaul’s Drag Race, Kim Chi describes this “author era” as a way to reach readers who may never see a drag show but can still connect to queer creativity through libraries and bookstores.
Born Sang-Young Shin in South Korea and raised in the United States, Kim Chi became widely recognized after competing on RuPaul’s Drag Race in 2016, where she placed as a runner-up and was celebrated for her highly stylized, anime-influenced looks. She was the first Korean American drag queen to appear on American national television, a milestone that has continued to shape how she understands her role in LGBTQ+ representation. In later interviews, including a 2023 video profile for them , she has spoken about intentionally using K-pop music and Korean cultural references in her performances to push back against the marginalization of Asian queer people in nightlife spaces.
In her recent interview with Out magazine , Kim Chi details how her two new books build on themes that have run through her drag and her beauty brand: an unapologetically maximalist visual style, a focus on food as comfort and culture, and a commitment to centering queer and trans readers who rarely see themselves depicted with joy. While the interview positions her as “avenging libraries,” Kim Chi frames the work less as a backlash and more as a celebration of public spaces where young LGBTQ+ people can encounter affirming stories for the first time.
She links this literary turn to her earlier performance of “Fat, Fem & Asian” on the RuPaul’s Drag Race season 8 finale, a number built around a song that directly confronted exclusionary dating preferences and racialized body shaming in gay communities. In a 2023 retrospective conversation, she recalled how speaking openly on television about being “fat, fem, and Asian” reflected experiences she and many other queer and trans people of color faced in supposedly inclusive spaces. The books, she suggests, continue that project by offering narratives where characters with similar identities are central, complex, and celebrated rather than sidelined.
Kim Chi’s move into publishing follows the success of KimChi Chic Beauty, the cosmetics line she launched in collaboration with Bespoke Beauty Brands and NYX founder Toni Ko in 2019. The brand has emphasized bold colors, playful packaging, and shade ranges that are explicitly marketed to people across genders and skin tones, aligning with broader LGBTQ+ and body-positive values. In an interview with Morning Brew, she described her drag persona as a “live-action anime character and high-fashion model,” a description that also captures the visual style that now carries over into her book projects.
Across multiple interviews, Kim Chi has discussed how her own nontraditional path—struggling with family expectations, finding drag in Chicago’s nightlife in 2012, and then navigating sudden reality-TV fame—taught her the importance of building multiple creative outlets and income streams. That context informs her portrayal of libraries and bookstores as vital infrastructures for LGBTQ+ survival, particularly for young people who may not yet have access to queer nightlife or community centers.
Kim Chi’s embrace of authorship comes amid ongoing challenges to LGBTQ+ books in U.S. schools and public libraries, where titles featuring queer and transgender characters have been disproportionately targeted in recent removal campaigns. According to reporting by the American Library Association, books with LGBTQ+ themes and books by or about people of color have made up a large share of the titles most frequently challenged in recent years. In this climate, Kim Chi’s insistence on creating vividly queer, unapologetically playful work for readers is framed in the Out interview as both artistic exploration and a practical contribution to keeping inclusive stories on shelves.
Her trajectory—from being one of RuPaul’s Drag Race’s most visually distinctive contestants to becoming a business owner and now an author—illustrates how drag performers have increasingly moved into mainstream cultural production while maintaining ties to LGBTQ+ communities. A 2019 ranking by New York Magazine of “the most powerful drag queens in America” placed Kim Chi among the top twenty, citing her influence in beauty and digital culture as well as her television impact. Her latest projects extend that influence into literature, offering new ways for queer and trans readers—particularly Asian American and plus-size audiences—to encounter themselves in stories that value their presence.
