Writers’ Workshop graduate Yiyun Li reads from her new novel, Kinder Than Solitude. Kinder Than Solitude is the story of three people whose lives are changed by a murder one of them may have committed. Moving back and forth in time, between America today and China in the 1990s, the book illustrates how even the most innocent person is capable of a heartless crime. Yiyun Li is the recipient of a MacArthur fellowship, the Frank O’Connor Award, the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award, the Whiting Writers’ Award, and the Guardian First Book Award. Li is the author of A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, The Vagrants, and Gold Boy, Emerald Girl. She teaches writing at the University of California, Davis, and lives in Oakland, California. “(Li’s) characters are portrayed with a harsh beauty, and one’s emotions become deeply engaged with their fates. This is an exceptional novel and Yiyun Li has grown into one of our major novelists.’ — Salman Rushdie

David Wystan Owen, a writer and former student of Li’s, moderates this special event.