Thi Bui is a writer and artist from Viet Nam, California, and New York; now residing in New Orleans. She is a long-time educator in public high schools, a professor of comics, a public speaker, an organizer and artist-activist, an ambivalent sculptor and puppeteer, a fledgling screenwriter, and an award-winning illustrator of children’s books and comics journalism.
Her graphic memoir, The Best We Could Do, received an American Book Award and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Eisner Award. It was also selected for the NEA Big Read program, adopted as a Common Read at many colleges and universities (including UCLA’s Common Book in 2017), and chosen as an all-city read by the Seattle and San Francisco Public Libraries.
Bui’s illustrations have been recognized with a Caldecott Honor for the picture book, A Different Pond, as well as the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for editorial cartooning for In/Vulnerable, a comics series collaboration between The Nib and Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting.