YIMING MA

Born in Shanghai, I write now from Toronto and Tokyo. I feel grateful to be a graduate of the Stanford MBA program, where I was an Arjay Miller Scholar, and the Warren Wilson MFA program, where I was the Carol Houck Smith Scholar.

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My novel THESE MEMORIES DO NOT BELONG TO US is represented by Michelle Brower from the Trellis Agency.

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My stories and essays have appeared in the New York Times, Guardian, the Florida Review, Ricepaper and 4th Estate. My story “Swimmer of Yangtze” won the 2018 Guardian 4th Estate Short Story Prize. Recently, my stories have been shortlisted/finalists for the Gulf Coast Prize, Ploughshares Emerging Writers Contest, Geist CanLit Prize, LitMag Virginia Woolf Prize, Florida Review Editors' Prize, and Commonwealth Short Story Prize. I have been awarded residencies and conferences from the Sewanee Writers' Conference, VQR Writers' Conference and the Vermont Studio Center.

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Beyond writing, I have most recently served as the Chief of Staff to senior leaders at mid-stage startups such as Wealthsimple and Rokt in Canada and the United States. I have also been a member of Penguin Random House's Executive Leadership Program in New York and Toronto. Before that, I worked at  Pearson Education growing affordable schools for low-income families in Africa and was a consultant at McKinsey.