Yiyun Li, recipient of the 2027 American Academy in Rome John Guare Writers Fund Rome Prize in Literature, has been awarded a 2026 Pulitzer Prize for her memoir, Things in Nature Merely Grow, described by the Pulitzer committee as a "remarkable, defiant work of radical acceptance." The book has also won the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction and is a finalist for the National Book Award for Nonfiction and the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award.
Things in Nature Merely Grow is a profound meditation on loss, love, and the will to carry on. After the deaths of her two sons, Vincent and James, both lost to suicide, Li turns not toward consolation or resolution, but toward something harder and more searching: a way of living alongside grief rather than purposefully overcoming it. The memoir is by turns intimate and philosophical, drawing on literature, music, gardening, and rigorous thinking as Li maps the contours of mourning, the complexity of raising gifted and sensitive children, and the quiet, stubborn insistence of life itself. Unsentimental in tone but extraordinary in its emotional force, it is ultimately a testament to the enduring power of language and thought.
In an interview published by Princeton University, Li notes: "The book was written because I hold my faith in language, in thinking, and in carrying on, despite the difficulties." She adds that winning the Pulitzer is a "bittersweet honor" that for her confirms "all these beliefs — in words, in language, in thinking through things."
Li said, "The news of the Rome Prize and the news of the Pulitzer arrived within a month, and I'm deeply honored and touched. I look forward to spending time at the American Academy in Rome. Several of my friends were there and they've never stopped raving about their experience. I'm fortunate to be able to join them."
Li is the author of several works of fiction, including Wednesday's Child, The Book of Goose, Must I Go, Where Reasons End, Kinder Than Solitude, Gold Boy, Emerald Girl, The Vagrants, and A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, as well as the memoir Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life. In addition to the Rome Prize, she is the recipient of many awards, including a PEN/Faulkner Award, a PEN/Malamud Award, a PEN/Hemingway Award, a PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, a MacArthur Fellowship, and a Windham-Campbell Prize. Li is the Robert F. Goheen Professor in the Humanities and a professor of creative writing at the Lewis Center for the Arts, Princeton University.
We look forward to welcoming Li to Rome, and we are honored that she will join the Academy's distinguished community of writers, artists, and scholars.
The Pulitzer Prize has brought further recognition to the Academy's community this year. 2024 Fellow Katie Kitamura's novel Audition was named a Pulitzer finalist in fiction, and earlier this year 2025 Resident Vijay Iyer was elected to the Pulitzer Prize Board, a fitting appointment for one of the most celebrated composers and musicians of his generation.