This online program will be streamed live via Zoom.

'This brilliant novel examines lives lived, losses accumulated, and the slipperiness of perception. Yiyun Li writes deeply, drolly, and with elegance about history, even as it's happening…Must I Go is an extraordinary book.' Meg Wolitzer

Yiyun Li joins Heidi Pitlor for True Conversations, where Pitlor asks leading contemporary writers questions not typically asked to women writers. This is not your average book talk!

Must I Go, published in July 2020, is about life in all its messy glory, and of a life lived by the extraordinary Lilia, absolutely on its own terms. With great candor and insight, Yiyun Li navigates the twin poles of grief and resilience, loss and rebirth, that compass a human heart.

To purchase this book, please visit our affiliate page at Bookshop.org. Bookshop is an online bookstore with a mission to financially support local, independent bookstores. The Mount will receive 10-30% of the proceeds of sale when accessed from this page.

Yiyun Li is the author of seven books, including Where Reasons End, the winner of PEN/Jean Stein Aard, and her most recent novel, Must I Go, published in July 2020. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, A Public Space, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Windham-Campbell Prize, and many other awards. She teaches at Princeton University.

Heidi Pitlor is the author of the novels The Birthdays and The Daylight Marriage, which was optioned for film. Her third novel, Impersonation, will come out on August 18, 2020. A former senior editor at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, she has been the series editor of The Best American Short Stories since 2007. She is also the editorial director of the literary studio, Plympton. Her writing has been published in Ploughshares, The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Huffington Post, It Occurs to Me That I Am America: New Stories and Art, Labor Day: True Birth Stories by Today’s Best Women Writers, and elsewhere. She lives outside Boston.

The Mount is a Massachusetts Cultural Council UP designated organization welcoming participants of all disabilities. Please contact The Mount at 413-551-5100 or by email, info@edithwharton.org, to discuss accommodations needed to participate fully in this event.