Episode 79: Interview with Author Christina Li

In episode 79 of Literary Prospects, we talk with author Christina Li about her debut adult novel, The Manor of Dreams.

Christina is the award-winning author of children’s books Clues to the Universe, which was a Washington Post summer book club pick, and Ruby Lost and Found, which was an NPR and New York Public Library Best Book of the Year. She is also the author of the YA title True Love and Other Impossible Odds.  Her adult fiction debut, The Manor of Dreams, listed as one of TIME Magazine’s most anticipated novels of 2025, is out now. Christina graduated from Stanford University with degrees in Economics and Public Policy. She loves to daydream about characters and drink too much jasmine green tea. She grew up in the Midwest and California but now calls New York home.

In this interview, Christina discusses our cultural obsession with haunted houses, how the sordid history behind the founding of her alma mater, Stanford University, inspired the novel, how she cultivated her own writing education (and got an agent at 16!), and much more.