Yiyun Li

reads from her memoir, Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life.

"In this exquisite, intimate, lyrical memoir, Yiyun Li reveals her life in flashes appended to an arrestingly coherent philosophy of time, self, and place. Uniting the discipline of a scientist with the empathy of a novelist, she scatters profound and often difficult truths through these generous, wise, challenging pages."-- Andrew Solomon, author of The Noonday Demon and Far from the Tree

Wednesday, February 22, 2017 - 7:30pm

In her first nonfiction book, award-winning novelist Yiyun Li explores the questions we ask ourselves as readers and writers, as citizens and solitary travelers, as parents and children: How does one make life livable? How do writing and reading bring us solace, and help us embrace the conflicts of our daily reality? Tracing the course of her life from China to America, and from biologist to writer, Li reflects with startling generosity and humanity on the writers who have shaped her—William Trevor, Katherine Mansfield, Marianne Moore, Ivan Turgenev, Stefan Zweig, and more.

Yiyun Li is the author of four works of fiction: Kinder Than Solitude, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, The Vagrants, and Gold Boy, Emerald Girl. A native of Beijing and a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, she is the recipient of many awards. In 2007, Granta named her one of the best American novelists under thirty-five. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, A Public Space, The Best American Short Stories, and The O. Henry Prize Stories, among others. She teaches writing at the UC, Davis, and lives in Oakland with her husband and their two sons.

Event address: 
2904 College Avenue
Berkeley, CA 94705