Jennie Li is a writer and educator from Honolulu, Hawai‘i. Her work is deeply inspired by her father’s emigration from Pakse, Laos, her mother’s emigration from Icheon, South Korea, and what it means for people to live in the past and present simultaneously. She is at work on a novel that follows a civilian Laotian family as they flee Laos near the end of the Laotian Civil War, and explores the meaning of family and love in the face of separation. She holds an MFA in fiction from the University of Oregon and an MA in fiction from the University of California, Davis, where she received the Elliot Gilbert Memorial Prize in fiction. She was a finalist for the 2020 Iowa Review Award in fiction. She is currently an educator at Leeward Community College on the island of Oahu, and a manager at Village Books & Music for the Friends of the Library of Hawai‘i.