Oakland, CA - Mills College announced today the hiring of award-winning writer Yiyun Li as a tenure-track assistant professor of English. She will teach fiction and creative non-fiction at the undergraduate and graduate levels.  Li was recognized this year with the Plimpton Prize for New Writers and a Pushcart Prize. The Los Angeles Times recently named her a “person to watch” in 2005.

Li is the author of A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, (Random House, forthcoming fall 2005) a collection of short stories to be published in the U.S., England, Germany and Italy.  She is also under contract with Random House for her novel-in-progress. Her fiction and memoir writing have been published in The New Yorker, Ploughshares, The Paris Review, and other magazines.

Considered a math prodigy in her native China, Li earned a BS in cell biology from Peking University, and an MS in immunology from the University of Iowa. This semester, she is completing two MFA degrees in writing - one in fiction from the Iowa Writers Workshop, and one in creative non-fiction from the University of Iowa. She is currently a teaching fellow at the University of Iowa.

Li’s stories arise primarily from tensions in Chinese society due to major changes in the past half century.  According to David Hamilton of The Iowa Review, “Li finds a way to distill thousands of years of Chinese history into a single story.” Cornelia Nixon, professor of Mills’ writing faculty praises Li’s work as “like no one else’s, operating on a high level of abstract thought but always conveyed in scintillating stories.”

Mills College provides outstanding undergraduate studies in English, and graduate studies leading to the MFA in Creative Writing and the MA in English and American Literature. Students benefit from the unique opportunity to work closely with distinguished faculty members dedicated to teaching within a dynamic liberal arts setting.

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