She is currently researching and drawing a work of graphic nonfiction about immigrant detention and deportation, to be published by One World, Random House.įrom 'Thi Bui's The Best We Could Do: A Teaching Guide' by the UO Common Reading Program of the University of Oregon. This section provides potential questions for class discussions or for approaches to student/faculty research and classroom engagement with the book. Her short comics can be found online at The Nib, PEN America, and BOOM California. With her son, Hien, she co-illustrated the children’s book, Chicken of the Sea (McSweeney’s, 2019), written by Pulitzer winner Viet Thanh Nguyen and his son, Ellison. She illustrated the picture book, A Different Pond, written by the poet Bao Phi (Capstone, 2017), for which she won a Caldecott Honor. It made over thirty best of 2017 book lists, including Bill Gates' top five picks.

Her debut graphic memoir, The Best We Could Do (Abrams ComicArts, 2017) has been selected for an American Book Award, a Common Book for UCLA and other colleges and universities, an all-city read by Seattle and San Francisco public libraries, a National Book Critics Circle finalist in autobiography, and an Eisner Award finalist in reality-based comics. Thi Bui was born in Vietnam and came to the United States in 1978 as part of the 'boat people' wave of refugees fleeing Southeast Asia at the end of the Vietnam War.

The best we could do pages