Winnie M Li
Winnie M Li is an author and activist, who has worked in the creative industry over three continents. Taiwanese-American and raised in New Jersey, Winnie studied Folklore and Mythology at Harvard, and later Irish Literature as a George Mitchell Scholar. Since then, she has written for travel guidebooks, produced independent feature films, programmed for film festivals, and developed eco-tourism projects.
After earning an MA with Distinction in Creative Writing at Goldsmiths, she now writes across a range of media, including fiction, theatre, journalism, and memoir.
Her debut novel, Dark Chapter, won The Guardian’s Not The Booker Prize in 2017, was nominated for the Edgar Award for Best First Novel, and was shortlisted for The Author’s Club Best First Novel Award. Translation rights for this novel have sold in nine territories.
Winnie is also Co-Founder of the Clear Lines Festival, the UK’s first-ever festival addressing sexual assault and consent through the arts and discussion. Her PhD research at the London School of Economics explores the media engagement by rape survivors as a form of activism. Winnie has appeared in The Guardian, The Mail on Sunday, The Times, The Independent, The LA Review of Books, The Chicago Tribune, The Irish Times, BBC World News, Sky News, Channel 4, and BBC Woman’s Hour, among other media outlets.
Winnie’s latest book, Complicit, was published by Orion in June 2022. Shining a spotlight on misogyny and abuse in the film industry, it delivers a slow-burning tale of a female former actor once on the cusp of stardom and the very real horrors women experience in the world built by and for powerful men.