Yiyun Li came to the United States from Beijing in 1996. Her stories and essays have been published in the New Yorker, Tin House, 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 California Book Award for first fiction. She lives in Oakland, California and teaches in the MFA program at Mills College.