Wednesday’s Child

Yiyun Li is the author of eight books of fiction and two books of nonfiction, including Where Reasons End, and Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, and elsewhere. Her accolades include the Guardian First Book Award, the Sunday Times Short Story Award, a Windham-Campbell prize, a MacArthur Foundation fellowship, a Guggenheim fellowship, the PEN/Jean Stein Award and the 2022 PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story. She teaches at Princeton University, and lives in Princeton, New Jersey.

‘Quiet, subtle and often agonisingly wrenching … A shimmering meditation’ Financial Times'Affecting' The Pulitzer Prize‘Tender, thoughtful’ Daily Mail‘Grief, survival, aftermath … Many of the pieces center on the painful unspooling of memories as life continues’ Observer‘Stories of mourning and intimacy … full of wonder’ Times Literary Supplement‘One of our finest practitioners of the short story form … Packed with extraordinary beauty and quiet devastation, these stories cut quick and deep, like a knife in the dark’ Esquire‘A skilled impressionist' The New York Times Book Review‘Strange and distinctive’ The Wall Street Journal‘A collection to savour, contemplate and return to’ Culture Whisper'A gorgeous almanac of the world of pain’ Kirkus‘Absorb the brilliance of Li’s prose … honour the breathtaking heartbreak trapped within’ Booklist‘Splendid and elegantly observed … These stories find Li at the top of her game’ Publishers Weekly‘[Li] has the gift of making every story feel like a discovery, freshly unearthed’ Louis Bayard, 2022 PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story Citation‘One of the foremost fiction writers in America … Li’s dense fiction weaves together history, memory, and experience … challenging and delighting at every turn’ World Literature Today‘Timeless … [Li’s] once again shown us why she’s remained such a treasured guide to the lands of grief over the past twenty-plus years’ Chicago Review of Books‘Few writers tackle the way grief reverberates through our lives with Li’s frankness, tact, and humour’ Vulture‘A beautiful meditation on life and all its nuances’ Shondaland