Yiyun Li

Yiyun Li grew up in Beijing, China. Her mother was a teacher and her father worked as a nuclear physicist, a profession where talk of emigration to the United States was common. Following a year of military service in the army, she went on to earn a B.S. at Peking University in 1996. In the same year she moved to the US and in 2000 earned an MS in immunology at The University of Iowa. In 2005 she earned a MFA degrees in creative nonfiction and fiction from The Nonfiction Writing Program and the Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa. Her stories and essays have been published in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, 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.

Li had a breakdown in 2012 and attempted suicide twice. After recuperating and leaving the hospital, she lost interest in writing fiction and 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”.

She lives in Princeton, New Jersey, with her husband and their two sons, and teaches at Princeton University.

• Lannan Foundation residency in Marfa, Texas
• 2005 –Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award for A Thousand Years of Good Prayers
• 2006 –PEN/Hemingway Award for A Thousand Years of Good Prayers
• 2006 –Guardian First Book Award for A Thousand Years of Good Prayers
• 2006 – Whiting Award
• California Book Award first fiction award for A Thousand Years of Good Prayers'
• 2007 –Granta's 21 Best of Young American Novelists
• California Book Award for The Vagrants
• 2010 –The New Yorker's 20 under 40
• 2010 –MacArthur Foundation fellow
• 2010 –Story Prize finalist for Gold Boy, Emerald Girl
• 2011 –International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award shortlist for The Vagrants
• 2011 –Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award shortlist for Gold Boy, Emerald Girl.
• 2014 –The American Academy of Arts and Letters's Benjamin H. Danks Award
• 2015 –Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award winner for "A Sheltered Woman".

Stephanie Merritt of The Observer wrote,

Yiyun Li's 2005 debut story collection A Thousand Years of Good Prayers earned her comparisons with Chekhov and Alice Munro. Her first novel, The Vagrants, draws heavily on the art of the short story as it follows a disparate group of citizens of the industrial town of Muddy River over three months in 1979.

Ian Thomson of The Independent wrote,

With its controlled understatement and scrupulous and unsparing lucidity, The Vagrants is a work of great moral poise and dignity. These days, few writers can be said to possess gravitas; yet Yiyun Li exudes a seriousness that would be remarkable in one twice her age. As a chronicle of political betrayal under a modern dictatorship, The Vagrants is a minor classic; I have not read such a compelling work in years.