Yiyun Li
Yiyun Li was born in Beijing, China, in 1972. In 1996, she came to the US to pursue a PhD in immunology, and three years later she gave it up to become a writer. She worked in a hospital for three years and then attended the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her collection of short stories, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, won the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award and the Guardian First Book Award. She lives in California.


