Jennie Li is a writer from Honolulu, Hawai‘i. She holds an MFA from the University of Oregon and an MA from the University of California, Davis, where she received the Elliot Gilbert Memorial Prize in fiction. She was also a finalist for the 2020 Iowa Review Award in fiction. Her writing is inspired by her father’s emigration from Pakse, Laos, and her mother’s emigration from Icheon, South Korea. She is working on a novel that follows a civilian Laotian family as they flee their homeland near the end of the civil war. She is currently a 2025–2026 Steinbeck Fellow at San Jose State University.