‘A friend in London talks about the mystifying phrase she keeps hearing these days: “This is not America, this is not who we are.” But this is America, this is life, and this is how human beings behave. American exceptionalism will not save us.’ Yiyun Li on the blog. www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/fe...

Another exciting lineup for the Durst Distinguished Lecture Series this spring at Purchase College: Kiran Desai, Yiyun Li, and Emil Ferris. Free, open to the public, and not too far from the city! www.purchase.edu/academics/sc...

We are honored to announce the 2026 #ALA_Carnegie winners: 🥇#Nonfiction: Yiyun Li, THINGS IN NATURE MERLY GROW 🥇#Fiction: Megha Majumdar, A GUARDIAN AND A THIEF Congratulations to our winners and publishers, @macmillanlib.bsky.social and @prhlibrary.bsky.social🎉 Read more: https://bit.ly/46gpBfU

“A recurrent subject for Beryl Bainbridge in her novels…is how much more fully and intensely children live in the world they create in their own minds than in the world outside.” —Yiyun Li

‘Cancel’ comes from a Latin word meaning “to make like a lattice.” When people needed to annul or void a document, they sometimes would mark it with crosshatches XXXXX which resembled a lattice. So the document became ‘canceled.’ ...we hope this post doesn’t get us that.

Yiyun Li on child’s play in Beryl Bainbridge’s An Awfully Big Adventure https://go.nybooks.com/3MTgRWy

In an essay drawn from her critically acclaimed book “Things in Nature Merely Grow,” Yiyun Li writes about the loss of her sons, and the type of sorrow for which there is no language. Read her account: newyorkermag.visitlink.me/cwGt5m

Titles by Miriam Toews, Margaret Atwood, James Baldwin, Yiyun Li, and more are among the best reviewed nonfiction books of 2025.

Announcing the National Book Critics Circle 2025 Longlist for Autobiography

I try not to know the sales numbers of my own books or others, but it appears that my book on writing has this week outsold Olivia Nuzzi's book on activities that she enjoys (including, I presume, writing). Not vastly outsold, so I have included a link. www.harpercollins.com/products/a-l...

It’s here: Our list of 100 Notable Books of 2025. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/24/b...

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

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

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.

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’

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.

“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")

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

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

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.”

“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

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.

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

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

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

“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 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

This. Again and again. No one has written the heart like @appletwigli.bsky.social— her words are foundational for me, as a writer, a human, and a mother. Always.

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

Dan Piepenbring reviews Yiyun Li’s memoir Things in Nature Merely Grow. buff.ly/DuBkCC5

"When mass protests broke out against his policy, Biden repeatedly condemned the activists as violent and antisemitic, responding to outlier actions that didn’t represent the movement. Biden’s slander helped splinter the Democratic coalition, giving Trump a potent wedge issue." shorturl.at/K4cPI

Not often that you get to spend an hour talking about a story you worked on. Thanks to Radiowest on @kuer.org. radiowest.kuer.org/show/radiowe...

"This personal history by @appletwigli.bsky.social left me in pieces. She writes in spare, unadorned prose and opens with an almost clinical study of the words delivered by a police officer: 'There is no good way to say this.'" -Guest editor @michaelluo.bsky.social www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

Yiyun Li’s new book — from which this essay is excerpted — is one of the most beautifully controlled expressions of grief and anger and abyss I’ve ever read.

“My husband and I had two children and lost them both: Vincent in 2017, at 16, James in 2024, at 19,” the author Yiyun Li writes. “Both chose suicide.”

#ThursdayThoughts #ThursdayMotivation #reading #books writingforwellbeing.co.uk

Thought maybe I'd distract myself with reading.

Remembered an old Chinese joke. Clinton said to Jiang Zemin: in the US we have the freedom of speech and any American citizen can criticize the president. Jiang said: in China we have the freedom of speech too, as any Chinese citizen can criticize American president.

"People are sometimes presumptuous, at other times predictable, but often they are both." New story by Yiyun Li (@appletwigli.bsky.social) in the New Yorker www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...