Yiyun Li has recently been named a MacArthur genius and featured as one of the Top 20 Writers under 40 by The New Yorker. Her latest collection of short stories, Gold Boy, Emerald Girl, has been heralded as “brilliant” by Publishers Weekly and “further proof that [she] deserves to be considered among the best living fiction writers” by Kirkus Review.The nine stories describe the rich tableaux of China and Chinese America, intermingling transnational politics and folklore, surrogate mothers and a private detective agency of feisty old women, and creating a dazzling world as vast as the human condition. This reading will be followed by a conversation with editor Brigid Hughes.

Yiyun Li grew up in Beijing and came to the United States in 1996. Her stories and essays have been published in The New Yorker, Best American Short Stories, O Henry Prize Stories, and elsewhere. Her debut collection,A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, won the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, PEN/Hemingway Award, Guardian First Book Award, and California Book Award for first fiction. Her novel,The Vagrants, won the gold medal of California Book Award for fiction. She is a contributing editor to the Brooklyn-based literary magazine, A Public Space, and teaches at University of California, Davis.

Brigid Hughes is the founding editor of A Public Space. Previously, she was editor of The Paris Review. She also co-curates the Between the Lines series at BAM.

$5 suggested donation. This event is open to the public.

Co-sponsored by A Public Space.