Yiyun Li

She is an editor of the Brooklyn-based literary magazine A Public Space.

Yiyun Li studied at Peking University and University of Iowa. The recorded working language is American English and English. Places of work recorded in the authority are Oakland. Employment is recorded with University of California, Davis and Princeton University. Works named in the authority record are The Vagrants, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers and Kinder Than Solitude.

• Name — Yiyun Li • Native Name — 李翊雲 • Born — 4 November 1972 • Birthplace — Beijing, China • Occupation — Author, professor • Language — English • Education — Peking University (BS) University of Iowa (MS, MFA) • Notable Works — *A Thousand Years of Good Prayers • The Vagrants • The Book of Goose • Children — 2 • Awards — MacArthur Fellow (2010) Guggenheim Fellow (2020) Pulitzer Prize (2026) Yiyun Li (born November 4, 1972) is a Chinese-born writer. She writes exclusively in English. Her short stories and novels have won several awards, including the PEN/Hemingway Award and Guardian First Book Award for A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, the 2020 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award for Where Reasons End, and the 2023 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction for The Book of Goose. Her short story collection Wednesday's Child was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. She is an editor of the Brooklyn-based literary magazine A Public Space.

Li was born and raised in Beijing, China. Her mother was a teacher and her father worked as a nuclear physicist. In Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life, Li recounts moments from her early life, including abuse by her mother. In 1991, Li fulfilled a compulsory year of service in the People's Liberation Army in Xinyang as part of her obligations before pursuing her college education. After earning a Bachelor of Science at Peking University in 1996, she moved to the U.S. In 2000, she earned a Master of Science in immunology at the University of Iowa. She left a PhD program in immunology to pursue writing. In 2005, she earned a Master of Fine Arts in creative nonfiction and fiction from The Nonfiction Writing Program and the Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa. Li's stories and essays have been published in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Harper's, and Zoetrope: All-Story. Two of the stories from A Thousand Years of Good Prayers were adapted into 2007 films directed by Wayne Wang: The Princess of Nebraska and the title story, which Li adapted herself. From 2005 to 2008, Li lived in Oakland, California, with her husband and their two sons. During that time, she taught at Mills College. In 2008, she moved from Oakland to join the faculty at the Department of English at the University of California, Davis. Since 2017, she has taught creative writing at Princeton University. Li had a breakdown in 2012 and attempted suicide twice. After recuperating and leaving the hospital, she lost interest in writing fiction. For a whole year, she focused on reading several biographies, memoirs, diaries and journals. According to her, reading about other people's lives "was a comfort". As a result of her experiences with depression, she wrote her 2017 memoir Dear Friend. A few months after the book was published, her 16-year-old son, Vincent, died by suicide. She explored this in her 2019 novel Where Reasons End. In September 2022, Li published The Book of Goose, a tale of a literary hoax spun by two 13-year-old girls in postwar France. The New York Times called it "an existential fable that illuminates the tangle of motives behind our writing of stories." In April 2023, the novel won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. Li has taught fiction at the University of California, Davis, and is a professor of creative writing at the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University. Li was appointed the Director of the Creative Writing Program at Princeton University in 2022, succeeding Jhumpa Lahiri. On February 16, 2024, Li's 19-year-old son, James, was fatally hit by a train in Princeton. The Middlesex County Medical Examiner's Office ruled his death a suicide. This was the same method her son Vincent had used. In 2025, Li published Things in Nature Merely Grow, a memoir about Vincent's and James's deaths and an exploration of the ways in which words fail but are still necessary. It was shortlisted for the 2025 National Book Award for Nonfiction and longlisted for the 2025 National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography.

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• Title — Publication — Collected in • "Immortality" — The Paris Review (Fall 2003) — A Thousand Years of Good Prayers • "Extra" — The New Yorker (December 22-29, 2003) • "Persimmons" — The Paris Review (Fall 2004) • "The Princess of Nebraska" — Ploughshares (Winter 2004) • "Death Is Not a Bad Joke If Told the Right Way" — Glimmer Train (Spring 2005) • "After a Life" — Prospect (April 2005) • "The Proprietress" — Zoetrope: All-Story 9.3 (Fall 2005) — Gold Boy, Emerald Girl • "Love in the Marketplace" — A Thousand Years of Good Prayers (Fall 2005) — A Thousand Years of Good Prayers • "Son" • "The Arrangement" • "A Thousand Years of Good Prayers" • "Prison" — Tin House 28 (Summer 2006) — Gold Boy, Emerald Girl • "Souvenir" — San Francisco Chronicle (July 9, 2006) • "House Fire" — Granta 97 (Spring 2007) • "Sweeping Past" — The Guardian (August 10, 2007) • "A Man Like Him" — The New Yorker (May 12, 2008) • "Gold Boy, Emerald Girl" — The New Yorker (October 13, 2008) • "Number Three, Garden Road" — Waving at the Gardener: The Asham Award Short-Story Collection (2009) • "Alone" — The New Yorker (November 16, 2009) — Wednesday's Child • "Kindness" — A Public Space 10 (2010) — Gold Boy, Emerald Girl • "The Science of Flight" — The New Yorker (August 30, 2010) — - • "The Reunion" — Washington Post Magazine (November 27, 2011) — - • "A Sheltered Woman" — The New Yorker (March 10, 2014) — Wednesday's Child • "On the Street Where You Live" — The New Yorker (January 9, 2017) • "A Small Flame" — The New Yorker (May 18, 2017) • "Do Not Yet Mother Dear Find Us"* — A Public Space 26 (2018) — * excerpt from Where Reasons End • "A Flawless Silence" — The New Yorker (April 23, 2018) — Wednesday's Child • "When We Were Happy We Had Other Names" — The New Yorker (October 1, 2018) • "All Will Be Well" — The New Yorker (March 11, 2019) • "Let Mothers Doubt" — Esquire UK (July/August 2020) • "Under the Magnolia" — The New York Times Magazine (July 12, 2020) — - • "If You Are Lonely and You Know It" — Amazon Original Stories (February 25, 2021) — - • "Hello, Goodbye" — The New Yorker (November 15, 2021) — Wednesday's Child • "Such Common Life" 1. Protein 2. Hypothesis 3. Contract — Zoetrope: All-Story 26.2 (Summer 2022) 26.3 (Fall 2022) 26.4 (Winter 2022) • "Wednesday's Child" — The New Yorker (January 23, 2023) • "The Particles of Order" — The New Yorker (September 2, 2024) — - • "Techniques and Idiosyncrasies" — The New Yorker (March 17, 2025) — - • "Any Human Heart" — The New Yorker (June 15, 2025) — -

* * • Li, Yiyun (October 31, 2024). "The Seventy Percent". Harper's Magazine • Printed under the title "A matter of facts".

She was employed by University of California, Davis and Princeton University. She belonged to PEN America and American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She worked at Oakland.

Works recorded as notable number 3: The Vagrants, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers and Kinder Than Solitude.

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