Beijing-born writer Yiyun Li has “had stories published in prestige magazines such as the New Yorker and the Paris Review. She’s won the Pushcart Prize and the Plimpton Prize for New Writers. Random House has signed her to a $200,000, two-book contract. Her first book, a story collection called ‘A Thousand Years of Good Prayers,’ was published this fall to wide praise. Now she has another problem: How do you explain to the federal immigration bureaucracy what the word ‘extraordinary’ means?”