Life
Yiyun Li grew up in Beijing, China, and moved to the United States after earning a B.S. at Peking University in 1996. She earned an MS in immunology at the University of Iowa, an MFA in creative nonfiction from the Nonfiction Writing Program at the University of Iowa, and an MFA in fiction from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Her stories and essays have been published in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and Zoetrope: All-Story. Two of the stories from A Thousand Years of Good Prayers were adapted into 2007 films directed by Wayne Wang: The Princess of Nebraska and the title story, which Li adapted herself.
She lives in Oakland, California, with her husband and their two sons, and teaches at University of California, Davis.
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