TWO MILLS PROFESSORS WIN PRESTIGIOUS WHITING WRITERS’ PRIZES 

Oakland, CA - Two outstanding Mills College faculty members, Yiyun Li and Micheline Aharonian Marcom, have received the prestigious Whiting Prize for emerging writers. Selected for “exceptional talent and promise,” both women will receive $40,000 from the 22nd Annual Whiting Writers’ Awards.

Li, an assistant professor of English at Mills, is an acclaimed Chinese émigré and fiction writer who has struggled to remain in the United States, even as her work continues to receive widespread recognition. Born in Saudi Arabia, Marcom is a visiting assistant professor at Mills whose novels have received national honors.

Li’s short story collection, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, won the PEN/Hemingway Award for debut fiction and the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, in addition to being selected by the San Francisco Chronicle as a “Best Book of 2005.” She was also a finalist for the Kiriyama Prize, given annually for books about the Pacific Rim and South Asia. Li was named a contributing author in the Best American Short Stories of 2006 for her short story “After a Life.”

Marcom won the 2005 PEN/USA award in fiction for her second novel, The Daydreaming Boy, which was also named a San Francisco Chronicle “Book of the Year” (2004). A recipient of the Lannan Literary Fellowship (2004), Marcom’s first novel, Three Apples Fell from Heaven, was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Foundation for first fiction, and received the Columbia University Anahid Literary Award. It was also named a “Notable Book of the Year” by the New York Times and one of the “Best Books of 2001” by the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post.

Other Whiting Award winners this year include Navajo poet Sherwin Bitsui, Irish author Patrick O'Keeffe, playwrights Bruce Norris and Stephen Adly Guirgis, poets Tyehimba Jess and Suji Kwock Kim, and fiction writers Charles D'Ambrosio and Nina Marie Martinez. Previous Whiting Award recipients include Jonathan Franzen, Michael Cunningham and Tobias Wolff.

The Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation was established by Flora E. Whiting in 1963, and has endowed fellowships in the Humanities for doctoral candidates in their dissertation year. The Foundation created the Whiting Writers' Awards in 1985, which are given annually to ten emerging writers in fiction, nonfiction, poetry and plays, based on accomplishment and promise. Candidates are proposed by nominators nationwide whose experience and vocations bring them in contact with individuals of extraordinary talent.

Mills College is a nationally renowned, independent liberal arts college offering innovative degree programs for undergraduate women, and graduate degree and certificate programs for women and men. Consistently recognized as one of the top 100 liberal arts colleges in the nation by U.S. News & World Report, Mills currently ranks among the top 20 most diverse liberal arts colleges.

This year, the Washington Monthly College Rankings (September 2006) named Mills a leading liberal arts college based on community service, research spending, quality of preparation for graduate education, and social mobility. In addition, The Princeton Review’s annual guide, the Best 361 Colleges (2007) included Mills for the second year in a row among top U.S. institutions offering students an outstanding undergraduate education.

Nestled in the foothills of Oakland, California on 135 lush acres, Mills provides a dynamic liberal arts education fostering women’s leadership, social responsibility, and creativity.

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