Yiyun Li

THINGS IN NATURE MERELY GROW by Yiyun Li has been named a 2026 Carnegie Medals for Nonfiction finalist! 👉📚 tinyurl.com/wuxm3rdh

Twenty Questions with Yiyun Li

Do your ideas form themselves in your head or on the page? ‘On the page. Ideas in one’s head are like beautiful fish in the water.’

Twenty Questions with Yiyun Li

Yiyun Li Named Princeton University’s Robert F. Goheen Professor in the Humanities Creative writing professor Yiyun Li has been named the Robert F. Goheen Professor in the Humanities at Princeton University.

Princeton's Yiyun Li (@appletwigli.bsky.social) has been named Princeton University’s Robert F. Goheen Professor in the Humanities, an appointment first held by Professor of Creative Writing, Emerita, Toni Morrison.

BOOK - Duel Duet: Selected Stories by Graham Greene, edited by Yiyun Li

4. BOOK - Duel Duet: Selected Stories by Graham Greene, edited by @appletwigli.bsky.social

‘This ingenious collection places Greene’s stories in pairs – to be read, as the title suggests, not merely in conversation, but also in opposition and in concert’

2025 National Book Awards Finalists Announced Twenty-five Finalists to contend for National Book Awards in the categories of Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Translated Literature, and Young People’s Literature

Congratulations to Princeton professors @poetpatriciasmith.bsky.social and @appletwigli.bsky.social and alumna @juliaioffe.bsky.social '05 who were named finalists for National Book Awards this week.

Evergreen!

“The adjectives which really suited grown-ups were ‘lily-livered’ and ‘chicken-hearted.’"
--Mary in Rebecca West's The Fountain Overflows (more recently encountered by me in @appletwigli.bsky.social's story "Any Human Heart")

♥️💚

Yiyun Li keert zich tegen het idee van rouw. Ze schrijft over de dood van haar twee zonen om ze bij zich te houden Yiyun Li verloor eerst haar oudste zoon, en daarna haar jongste. Ook zelf kende ze perioden van suïcidale depressie. De wereld van taal – van schrijven, denken, lezen – geeft haar vaste grond onder de...

In @groene.nl - Yiyun Li 💚
@appletwigli.bsky.social @4thestatebooks.bsky.social #nieuwamsterdam

“Two moments in Graham Greene’s published life have often returned to me in the past twenty years. This may sound strange: an ideal reader should refrain from crossing the boundary between a writer’s work and his life.”

Yiyun Li on Graham Greene. buff.ly/M9gqQF9

Not to mention the ancient practice of fitting a crank and turning to open a car window!

"The humanities tell us who we are. Without them, we're automata." Edward Carey, Celsius 232 Festival, Avilés, Spain.

Yiyun Li’s Latest Memoir Illuminates My Responsibilities and Limitations as a Parent - Electric Literature As the mother of a trans child and the daughter of a man who died by suicide, “Things in Nature Merely Grow” pulled me in like a black hole

Reading Yiyun Li’s latest memoir “Things in Nature Merely Grow,” Ali Moss reflects on her responsibilities and limitations as a parent.

electricliterature.com/yiyun-lis-la...

“There is no redemption arc in ‘Things in Nature Merely Grow,’ no arrival at a deeper meaning of life after the tragedies of Vincent and James’s suicides.” Jenessa Abrams reviews Yiyun Li’s "Things in Nature Merely Grow." https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/children-die-and-parents-go-on-living/

“Fortunately, fiction allows one the space to complicate matters and dispel the innocence of any image.” Yiyun Li discusses her short story “Any Human Heart.”

“Any Human Heart,” by Yiyun Li And here sat Maureen, who had no one else to send flowers to as sweet revenge. And here sat Lilian, who had thought that little in life could surprise her anymore.

“And here sat Maureen, who had no one else to send flowers to as sweet revenge. And here sat Lilian, who had thought that little in life could surprise her anymore.” Read a new short story by Yiyun Li.

“Not calling a fact by its name can be the beginning of cruelty and injustice.” —Yiyun Li #SundaySentence

Yiyun Li Remembers Edmund White The writer remembers an unlikely but laughter-filled friendship.

Lovely essay in memory of Edmund White by @appletwigli.bsky.social

yalereview.org/article/yiyu...

“We both took pleasure in being irrelevant and irreverent and unflappable.”

Today in TYR, Yiyun Li pays tribute to her friend, the late Edmund White.

Review | A mother pays tribute to the sons she lost In her memoir “Things in Nature Merely Grow,” Yiyun Li tries to honor the lives, and accept the unfathomable deaths, of her two sons.

The latest book by @appletwigli.bsky.social absolutely devastated me with its beauty and grace so I wrote about it for @washingtonpost.com

www.washingtonpost.com/books/2025/0...

♥️💚

Farewell my love

The cover features a painting from 1870 of a white poodle, a gold pear shape seen partially, and a note that the book was a Pulitzer Prize Finalist.

From @appletwigli.bsky.social 's story collection Wednesday's Child: Perhaps grief was the recognition of having run out of illusions. #SundaySentence #Booksky

A hardcover book lying on a café table, with a fading green dust jacket, by writer Yiyun Li, with the title “things in nature merely grow”

The pain of this book, and its immense beauty @appletwigli.bsky.social 💚

I just finished Things in Nature Merely Grow by @appletwigli.bsky.social and am disrupted, moved, challenged in ways I did not expect. I write a lot about grief and..... will be carrying this magnificent book and its refusal of grief inside me for a long time ahead. #Booksky

Sometimes a Rose Is Just a Rose A conversation about gardening, loss, and the end of metaphor

“I’ve been on this crusade against metaphor for years,” Yiyun Li tells Manjula Martin in this conversation. “I think metaphors are not helpful when you are writing about things that are very hard to tackle.”

For garden lovers, metaphor haters, and those learning to accept grief.

A green-jacketed paperback nestled in green grass. The book is Things in Nature Merely Grow, by Yiyun Li.

Hand holding a green-jacketed paperback against a backdrop of green grass and autumn grapevine leaves. The book is Things in Nature Merely Grow, by Yiyun Li.

A longish post. I don’t think I’ve ever read a more truthful book – and nor, therefore, a more humane book than Things in Nature Merely Grow. Yiyun Li’s philosophical and psychic reckoning with the loss of both her sons is soaked in what Graham Greene once referred to as ‘the dignity of despair’. >

uncommon grace, yes 💚

thank you @appletwigli.bsky.social for writing Things in Nature Merely Grow, which will be out Tuesday

‘I Don’t Ever Want to Be Free From the Pain of Missing My Children’

All the love to @appletwigli.bsky.social, who has written a book of staggering heartbreak and uncommon grace.