Oakland, CA - Yiyun Li, assistant professor of English at Mills College, has received this year's Guardian first book award. Designed to recognize the finest new literary talent, the award was given for A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, Li’s collection of short stories set in and around China.

In the months since its publication, the collection has received praise from every quarter, holding off major competition to win the Frank O'Connor International Award, the world's richest short story prize, taking home a PEN/Hemingway award and a California book award for first fiction. The book was also short-listed for the Orange award for new writers and the Kiriyama Pacific Rim book prize.

In his review of the book for the Guardian, Michel Faber describes Li as "the real deal", possessed of "the talent, the vision and the respect for life's insoluble mysteries to be a truly fine writer. There is a strangeness at the heart of her fiction that comes from somewhere other than China—a world inside the author."

Li triumphed over a strong short list open to writing across all genres, consisting entirely of fiction this year. In last year's award won by Alexander Masters for Stuart, A Life Backwards, four of the five short-listed books were non-fiction.

This year’s other contenders were Hisham Matar with In the Country of Men; Carrie Tiffany's Everyman's Rules for Scientific Living; Poppy Shakespeare, a satirical examination of Britain's mental health system by Clare Allan; and Lorraine Adams' novel, Harbor.

Claire Armitstead, the Guardian's literary editor and chair of the judges, said, "Yiyun Li is an exceptionally talented writer with a huge and important story to tell—one that stretches from China to the US, from 20th-century communism to 21st-century capitalist society. It's all the more remarkable that she tells it so well through such small and particular vignettes. Her stories burst open in the mind and continue growing long after you put the book down.”

The other judges were: Jude Kelly, artistic director of the South Bank Centre; authors Joseph O'Connor, Pankaj Mishra and Rose Tremain; commentator and broadcaster Greg Dyke; Katharine Viner, editor of the Guardian's G2; and Stuart Broom of Waterstone's. The prize, worth £10,000 was presented this week at a ceremony at the Pigalle Club in Piccadilly.

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. The New York Times recently selected Mills as one of three leading California colleges for students to consider.

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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