• Whiting Writers' Award
• Lannan Foundation residency in Marfa, TX
• Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, for her debut collection, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers
• PEN/Hemingway Award for A Thousand Years of Good Prayers
• Guardian First Book Award for A Thousand Years of Good Prayers
• California Book Award for first fiction
• Granta's 21 Best of Young American Novelists

Anthologies

• Best American Short Stories

Yiyun Li's 2005 debut story collection A Thousand Years of Good Prayers earned her comparisons with Chekhov and Alice Munro. Her first novel, The Vagrants, draws heavily on the art of the short story as it follows a disparate group of citizens of the industrial town of Muddy River over three months in 1979.

With its controlled understatement and scrupulous and unsparing lucidity, The Vagrants is a work of great moral poise and dignity. These days, few writers can be said to possess gravitas; yet Yiyun Li exudes a seriousness that would be remarkable in one twice her age. As a chronicle of political betrayal under a modern dictatorship, The Vagrants is a minor classic; I have not read such a compelling work in years.