Li Zhuang is a PhD candidate of Creative Writing at Florida State University. In 2019, Li graduated with an MFA in Fiction Writing from Columbia University. Her work has appeared in The Georgia Review, Pleiades, The Common, Denver Quarterly, The Madison Review, and The Collapsar, etc. She is the winner of 2025 SAMLA Graduate Student Creative Writing Award, a finalist for the 2025 Loraine Williams Poetry Prize and a runner up for Grist’s ProForma contest. Her poetry chapbook But Octopi Don’t Sing, published in March 2026, was selected as the runner-up for the Purple Ink Press’s Chapbook Contest by Chen Chen. Li is working on her debut novel about Chinese lesbian romantic relationships in a futuristic New York City, where memories can be altered through mnemonic navigation machines.
