Growing up as a working-class, first-generation immigrant, Yiming had a turbulent childhood. Attending eight schools before eighth grade as his family moved between China, America, and Canada, he often wished they had either stayed in Asia or committed to moving abroad. Since he was an only child, books soon became his most reliable companions, and he dreamed of being a writer—though in his family, such a vocation was considered impossible. He ultimately pursued a different path, leading to his work with SPARK Schools, an affordable school chain in South Africa, which today serves over fourteen thousand learners.
The summer before starting his MBA at Stanford, Yiming took his first Intro to Fiction class. Two years later, when his story Swimmer of Yangtze won the Guardian 4th Estate Story Prize, he realized he couldn’t ignore his creative calling anymore. Emboldened, he applied to Warren Wilson’s MFA program and graduated three years later as the Carol Houck Smith Scholar. Eight years after that summer course, These Memories Do Not Belong to Us will be published next Fall 2025 by McClelland & Stewart (PRH Canada) and Mariner (HarperCollins), and has published work in The New York Times, The Guardian, and The Florida Review, among others.