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Yiyun Li
Yiyun Li grew up in Beijing and came to the United States in 1996. She has received fellowships and awards from Lannan Foundation and Whiting Foundation. Her debut collection, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, won the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, PEN/Hemingway Award, Guardian... show more



Yiyun Li grew up in Beijing and came to the United States in 1996. She has received fellowships and awards from Lannan Foundation and Whiting Foundation. Her debut collection, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, won the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, PEN/Hemingway Award, Guardian First Book Award, and California Book Award for first fiction. Her novel, The Vagrants, won the gold medal of California Book Award for fiction, and was shortlisted for Dublin IMPAC Award. Gold Boy, Emerald Girl, her second collection, was a finalist of Story Prize and shortlisted for Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award. Her books have been translated into more than twenty languages. She was selected by Granta as one of the 21 Best Young American Novelists under 35, and was named by The New Yorker as one of the top 20 writers under 40. MacArthur Foundation named her a 2010 fellow. She is a contributing editor to the Brooklyn-based literary magazine, A Public Space. She lives in Oakland, California with her husband and their two sons, and teaches at University of California, Davis.

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Birth date: January 01, 1972
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learn by going
learn by going rated it 7 years ago
Reading Li's memoir was a unique experience, or perhaps one so rare I can't remember the last time I had it. It challenged me to think not only about her as a writer and reader, but about myself as a writer and reader. I highlighted tons of passages, brief and long. I read the book slowly because I ...
My Never Ending List
My Never Ending List rated it 7 years ago
I would have never read this book had it not been a book for club book and I know I wouldn’t have finished this novel had it not been for book club. This book was different. I couldn’t get a firm grip on what was happening in the novel as I read it and it frustrated me. I couldn’t follow the storyli...
Memories From Books on Booklikes
Memories From Books on Booklikes rated it 8 years ago
To understand Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life by Yiyun Li, you have to understand the context in which it came to be written. I struggle with how to rate this book. On the one hand, I have enormous respect for the author's struggle with mental health. On the other hand, the boo...
DemonessTenebrae
DemonessTenebrae rated it 10 years ago
Written for and published on a Croatian web portal: www.citajme.com „Bili su usamljeni i tužni ljudi, sve troje, i neće si uzajamno umanjiti tugu, ali mogu, vrlo pažljivo, stvoriti svijet koji će prihvatiti njihovu samoću.“ Rečenica koja je uzeta iz pripovijetke „Zlatni dečko, smaragdna djev...
DubaiReader
DubaiReader rated it 11 years ago
Death would be kinder than solitude. I loved Yiyun Li's previous book, The Vagrants (5 stars), but I just didn't click with The Kindness of Solitude in the same way. I found this latest book to be a much denser read, with too much philosophising for my taste. It was also billed as a mystery aroun...
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