News and Stories from China

Yiyun Li, Assistant Professor of English at UC Davis, will host a talk in continuation of the IEAS book series: New Perspectives in Asia.

China in the past thirty years has transformed itself in so many ways that news from China seems always new, though is it really? What changes and what remains unchanged beneath a surface of prosperity? Yiyun Li will read from her latest book, Gold Boy, Emerald Girl, and discuss news and stories from China.

Yiyun Li is the author of A Thousand Years of Good Prayers and The Vagrants. A native of Beijing and a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, she is the recipient of the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award, a Whiting Writers’ Award, and the Guardian First Book Award. In 2007, Granta named her one of the best young American novelists under thirty-five, and in 2010, The New Yorker named her one of the top 20 writers under 40. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, A Public Space, The Best American Short Stories, The O.Henry Prize Stories, among others. She teaches writing at the University of California, Davis, and lives in Oakland, California, with her husband and their two sons.