Thi Bui

Thi Bui (born 1975) is a Vietnam-born American graphic novelist and illustrator. She is most known for her illustrated memoir, The Best We Could Do.

Biography Thi Bui was born in what was then Saigon, Vietnam three months prior to the Fall of Saigon during the Vietnam War. She is one of six children; two of her older siblings passed away prior to her birth. She and her family were part of the wave of "boat people" from Southeast Asia, arriving at a refugee camp in Malaysia. They were eventually granted asylum to the United States and migrated there in 1978.

Career Bui has worked as a school teacher for years having worked in schools in New York City and Oakland. She was one of the founders of Oakland International High School in Oakland, California, the first public high school in California for recent immigrants and English learners. There, she worked as an art and digital media teacher. Since 2015, she has been a faculty member of the MFA in Comics program at the California College of the Arts. Prior to her career as an illustrator, she had never had any experience with drawing. In 2017, it made Bill Gates' top five book list. For the 2017 to 2018 academic year, it was selected as UCLA's Common Book and was incorporated into its undergraduate program.

The same year, A Different Pond, a children's picture book, was published. She worked on the book as an illustrator and collaborated with spoken word artist and writer Bao Phi for the project. A Different Pond went on to win the Caldecott Honor for illustration.

In 2019, she teamed up with acclaimed novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen for a new picture book titled Chicken of the Sea. Nguyen and Bui collaborated with their sons to create the story with Nguyen and his son Ellison as writers and Bui and her son Hien as illustrators.

Since her debut work, she has gone on to write and illustrate short-form comics about many domestic political issues within the Southeast Asian community. Her next book, Nowhereland, will focus on the topics of incarceration and deportation of the Southeast Asian people in the United States. She is also working on a science fiction story about climate change in Vietnam and in poorer countries.

Awards

The Best We Could Do 2017: UCLA's Common Book 2017: National Book Critics Circle finalist 2018: American Book Award 2018: Eisner Award finalist (Reality-based Comics) A Different Pond 2017: Caldecott Honor for illustration