Writer Yiyun Li knows that the world we live in can be a painful place.

Through her physicist father in Beijing, she learned stoicism, yet her novels and stories are filled with feeling. “I feel more responsible for my characters than for how I feel,” she says.

After receiving her first master’s degree in immunology, she earned a second master’s in creative writing from the acclaimed Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa. Li says she creates characters to make sense of her observations of people.

Her first story was published in The New Yorker and her honors, to date, include a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, a Windham Campbell Prize, the 2021 Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the PEN/Hemingway Award.

Recently, Li became director of the creative writing program at Princeton University in which she has taught since 2017, and in September, her 10th book will be published.

By creating characters, the "MacArthur Genius" seeks to make sense of it all.