Visiting Writers Lecture Series

Yiyun Li grew up in Beijing, China, and came to the United States in 1996. She began writing in her late twenties, and has published stories and essays inthe New Yorker, Best American Short Stories, and elsewhere. Her debut collection, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, won the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, PEN/Hemingway Award, and Guardian First Book Prize, among many other awards. She received a Whiting Writers' Award and a residency fellowship from Lannan Foundation, and was recently chosen by Granta magazine as one of the best young American novelists. She lives in Oakland, California, with her husband and two sons, and teaches in the M.F.A. program at Mills College.