Yiyun Li Recommends Rebecca West's 'The Fountain Overflows'
In a recent interview with The New Yorker, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Yiyun Li discussed her reading habits and recommended Rebecca West's novel 'The Fountain Overflows.' Li, who won the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for Memoir or Autobiography for 'Things in Nature Merely Grow,' keeps 'The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens' on her desk for daily inspiration. She also cites 'Moby-Dick' and Shakespeare's 'Richard II' as works that provide rhythmic grounding. Li's memoir, first excerpted in The New Yorker, addresses the deaths of her two sons by suicide. She is also known for her novel 'The Book of Goose.' The interview was edited and condensed.
Key facts
- Yiyun Li won the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for Memoir or Autobiography for 'Things in Nature Merely Grow'.
- The memoir was first excerpted in The New Yorker.
- Li recommends Rebecca West's novel 'The Fountain Overflows'.
- She keeps 'The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens' on her desk.
- She cites 'Moby-Dick' and Shakespeare's 'Richard II' as influential.
- Li's memoir addresses the deaths of her two sons by suicide.
- She is also the author of 'The Book of Goose'.
- Edmund White mentioned Li's recommendation in his memoir 'The Unpunished Vice: A Life of Reading'.
Entities
Artists
- Yiyun Li
- Wallace Stevens
- Rebecca West
- Edmund White
- Herman Melville
- William Shakespeare
Institutions
- The New Yorker
- Pulitzer Prize