UC Davis English professor Yiyun Li has been named one of the nation’s best young fiction writers by editors of The New Yorker.

Li, who drew rave reviews for her first novel — published last year — was among 20 writers under age 40 whom The New Yorker’s editors selected as the best and most promising of their generation.

“These twenty men and women dazzlingly represent the multiple strands of inventiveness and vitality that characterize the best fiction being written in this country today,” the editors wrote in the June 14 edition of the magazine.

To qualify for the list, writers had to have produced at least one book or manuscript as well as a new work that was published in the latest New Yorker or will be published in a future issue.

Li, 37, was among several cited for their “haunting sociopolitical stories.” Her first novel, “The Vagrants,” is set in her native China during the Cultural Revolution.

“What was notable in all the writing, above and beyond a mastery of language and of storytelling, was a palpable sense of ambition,” the editors stated.

“These writers are not all iconoclasts; some are purposefully working within existing traditions. But they are all aiming for greatness: fighting to get our attention, and to hold it, in a culture that is flooded with words, sounds, pictures; fighting to surprise, to entertain, to teach, and to move not only us but generations of readers to come.”

Li, who came to the United States to pursue a Ph.D. in immunology, said it was a “great honor” to be recognized by The New Yorker. She wrote a new story for the competition.

“I was very happy about the story — probably happier than being included on the list,” she said of the piece set in the Midwest. A previous story that she also wrote for The New Yorker was set in Idaho.

“These two stories, in a way, indicate a new direction for my writing. Many of my other stories and my novel were set in China. Of course China will always be part of my subject, but now that I have lived in America for 14 years, I feel this country is starting to show up more in my writing.”

Li published a debut collection of short stories, “A Thousand Years of Good Prayers,” in 2005. The book won the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, PEN/Hemingway Award, Guardian First Book Award and California Book Award for first fiction. Two years later, she was selected by Granta magazine as one of the Best Young American Novelists.

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