Award-winning writer, professor, and Director of the Program in Creative Writing Yiyun Li has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She is counted among 19 newly elected members, along with four honorary members, in the fields of Architecture, Art, Literature and Music. The honor of election is considered the highest form of recognition of artistic merit in the United States.
Inductees this year across all disciplines include Maurice Cox, Percival Everett, Shirin Neshat, Yvonne Rainer, Roger Reynolds and Anna Deavere Smith, among others. New members will be inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters during its annual Ceremonial on May 24, 2023.
Award-winning writer Yiyun Li, director of Princeton’s Program in Creative Writing. Photo ©Basso CANNARSA/Opale
Li’s most recent novel, The Book of Goose, is longlisted for the 2023 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. She is the author of ten books, including Where Reasons End; Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life; and Tolstoy Together, 85 Days of War and Peace with Yiyun Li. Her work has been translated into more than 20 languages. Li’s honors and awards 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, the Benjamin H. Dank Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award, the PEN/Jean Stein Award, the PEN/Malamud Award, the PEN/Hemingway Award, The Guardian First Book Award, the Asian American Literary Award for fiction, and others. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, an independent film directed by Wayne Wang and adapted by Li from her short story, was the winner of a Golden Shell for Best Film at the 55th San Sebastian International Film Festival. Her short story collection, Wednesday’s Child, is forthcoming in September 2023.
Li joins current Academy member and creative writing professor Paul Muldoon, along with emeritus Princeton creative writing faculty members Joyce Carol Oates and Edmund White.
The American Academy of Arts and Letters was founded in 1898 as an honor society of the country’s leading architects, artists, composers, and writers. Early members include William Merritt Chase, Childe Hassam, Julia Ward Howe, Henry James, Edward MacDowell, Theodore Roosevelt, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, John Singer Sargent, Mark Twain, and Edith Wharton. The Academy’s 300 members are elected for life and pay no dues. In addition to electing new members as vacancies occur, the Academy seeks to foster and sustain an interest in Literature, Music, and the Fine Arts by administering over 70 awards and prizes totaling more than $1 million, exhibiting art and manuscripts, funding performances of new works of musical theater, purchasing artwork for donation to museums across the country, and presenting talks and concerts.
Read the Academy of Arts and Letters’ official press release to learn more about the Academy and its new members.
