A Sheltered Woman
Yiyun Li”'Li inhabits the lives of her characters with such force & compassion that one cannot help but marvel at her remarkable talents.” — Junot Díaz
Auntie Mei is a live-in nanny for newborns & their mothers. She has worked for a hundred & twenty-six families & looked after a hundred & thirty-one babies, one set of clients easily replaced by the next. But the hundred & thirty-second baby & his mother Chanel prompts a crisis in Auntie Mei's life – a tremor that threatens to destroy her resolute detachment.
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YIYUN LI is the author of the novels A Thousand Years of Good Prayers & The Vagrants & two books of nonfiction, including Where Reasons End, & Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life.
A native of Beijing & a graduate of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, she is the recipient of the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award, the Sunday Times Short Story Award, a Windham-Campbell prize, the Whiting Writers’ Award, the 2022 PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story, & the Guardian First Book Award.
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, The O. Henry Prize Stories, & elsewhere. She teaches at Princeton University.
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Yiyun Li grew up in Beijing & came to the United States in 1996. Her debut collection, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, won the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award & the Guardian First Book Award. Her novel, The Vagrants, was shortlisted for the Dublin IMPAC Award. Her books have been translated into more than 20 languages. She was selected by Granta as one of the 21 Best Young American Novelists under 35, and was named by The New Yorker as one of the top 20 writers under 40.