Yiyun Li

Born in Beijing in 1972, Yiyun Li immigrated to the United States in 1996 and received an MS in immunology from the University of Iowa four years later. She then attended the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, taking MFAs in fiction and nonfiction. Li published the book of short stories A Thousand Years of Good Prayers in 2005 and the novel The Vagrants in 2009. In 2010 she was awarded a MacArthur “genius” grant. She does not write in her native language. “I count and do my math in Chinese,” she once said, “but most of my thinking is done in English.” She recently released her second short-story collection, Gold Boy, Emerald Girl.