Yiyun Li (born November 4, 1972) is a Chinese-born writer and professor in the United States. 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,[1][2] and the 2020 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award for Where Reasons End.[3] She is an editor of the Brooklyn-based literary magazine A Public Space.[4]

Yiyun Li
Native name	李翊雲
Born	(1972-11-04) November 4, 1972 (age 49) Beijing, China
Occupation	Author, professor
Language	English
Nationality	Chinese
Alma mater	Peking University University of Iowa
Notable awards	MacArthur Fellow Guggenheim Fellowship
Children	2
Website
yiyunli.com

Biography

Yiyun was born and raised in Beijing, China.[5][6] Her mother was a teacher and her father worked as a nuclear physicist.[7] Following a compulsory year of service in the People's Liberation Army,[5] 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 an MFA degree 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,[8] 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 Yiyun adapted herself.

Li had a breakdown in 2012 and attempted suicide twice.[9] 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".[9] She 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.[10]

Award and honours

• 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[11]
• 2010 – The New Yorker's 20 under 40
• 2010 – MacArthur Foundation fellow[12]
• 2010 – Story Prize finalist for Gold Boy, Emerald Girl
• 2011 – International Dublin Literary Award shortlist for The Vagrants[11]
• 2011 – Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award shortlist for Gold Boy, Emerald Girl.[13][14]
• 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".[15]
• 2020 – PEN/Jean Stein Book Award for Where Reasons End[3]
• 2020 – Windham-Campbell Literature Prize[16]
• 2020 – Guggenheim Fellowship[17]

Bibliography

This list is incomplete; you can help by adding missing items. (March 2015)

Novels

• — (2009). The Vagrants. New York: Random House. ISBN 978-1-4000-6313-0. LCCN 2008023467. OCLC 229028064.
• — (2014). Kinder Than Solitude. New York: Random House. ISBN 978-1-4000-6814-2. LCCN 2013017307. OCLC 842323189.
• — (2019). Where Reasons End. New York: Random House. ISBN 978-1-984817-37-2. LCCN 2018013429. OCLC 1030447783.
• — (2020). Must I Go. New York: Random House. ISBN 978-0-399-58912-6. LCCN 2019048747. OCLC 1125306132.
• — (2022). The Book of Goose. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 978-0-374-60634-3. LCCN 2022022703. OCLC 1289234580.

Short fiction

Collections

• Li, Yiyun (2005). A Thousand Years of Good Prayers. Random House.
• — (2010). Gold boy, emerald girl. Random House.

Short stories

Memoir

• Li, Yiyun (2017). Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life. Random House.

Essays and reporting

• Li, Yiyun (December 22–29, 2014). "Listening is believing". Inner Worlds. The New Yorker. 90 (41): 88.
• — (January 2, 2017). "To speak is to blunder : choosing to renounce a mother tongue". Personal History. The New Yorker. 92 (43): 30–33.

References

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to Yiyun Li.

• Profile at The Whiting Foundation
• "The Rumpus Interview with Yiyun Li", January 14th, 2009
• January 2009 interview with Yiyun Li
• "Executioner Songs", The Wall Street Journal, JANUARY 30, 2009
• "Interviews: Yiyun Li", Identity Theory
• Articles by Yuyun Li on her UK publisher's blog, 5th Estate
• Yiyun Li speaks about Gold Boy, Emerald Girl on KRUI's The Lit Show
• Video: The Story Prize reading with Anthony Doerr and Suzanne Rivecca. March 2, 2011.

На других языках

[ru] Ли Июнь