Yiyun Li Latest Articles | The New Yorker

Yiyun Li Latest Articles | The New Yorker

Yiyun Li
Yiyun Li has been contributing to The New Yorker since 2003. A former MacArthur Fellow, she is the recipient of honors such as the 2022 PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story and the 2020 Windham Campbell Prize in Fiction. Her books include the story collection “Wednesday’s Child,” which was a finalist for the 2024 Pulitzer Prize, and the memoir “Things in Nature Merely Grow.” Li is a professor at Princeton, where she directs the Program in Creative Writing.

Fiction
“Any Human Heart”


And here sat Maureen, who had no one else to send flowers to as sweet revenge. And here sat Lilian, who had thought that little in life could surprise her anymore.
June 15, 2025
Personal History
The Deaths—and Lives—of Two Sons


The truth is that however I choose to express myself will not live up to the weight of these facts: Vincent died, and then James died.
March 23, 2025
Fiction
“Techniques and Idiosyncrasies”


It’s astonishing, Lilian often thought, that people feel this urge to talk about themselves with a stranger, however much or little they have lived.
March 9, 2025

Fiction
“The Particles of Order”


If a person’s imagination, kind or wicked, was boundless, sooner or later what was imagined could become a fact.
August 25, 2024
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Personal History
What Gardening Offered After a Son’s Death


Deep in mourning, I thought, What if spring never returns?
October 23, 2023
Fiction
Wednesday’s Child


“ ‘Never argue’ was Rosalie’s motto; especially, never argue with the dead.”
January 16, 2023
Road Trips
In the Beforetime


“I could sense in my bones that the worst had happened, yet a road trip allowed time and space for disbelief. Disbelief is a kind of hope.”
July 4, 2022

Fiction
Hello, Goodbye
November 8, 2021
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Personal History
The Ability to Cry


If I shed one tear, I might become Alice, swimming in an ocean of my tears.
November 9, 2020
Fiction
All Will Be Well
March 4, 2019
Fiction
When We Were Happy We Had Other Names


“One morning when Jiayu opened her eyes she said to the ceiling, Grief, I don’t know who you are, so don’t pretend you know who I am.”
September 24, 2018

Fiction
A Flawless Silence
April 16, 2018
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Fiction
A Small Flame
May 1, 2017
Fiction
On the Street Where You Live
January 1, 2017
Personal History
To Speak Is to Blunder
December 25, 2016

Inner Worlds
Listening Is Believing
December 15, 2014
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Fiction
A Sheltered Woman


“Auntie Mei had worked as a live-in nanny for newborns and their mothers for eleven years. As a rule, she moved out of the family’s house the day a baby turned a month old.”
March 2, 2014
Culture Desk
The Year in Reading: Niccolò Tucci
December 12, 2011
Coming to America
A Clean, Well-Lighted Place
April 11, 2011

20 Under 40 Fiction
The Science of Flight
August 23, 2010