Thi Bui & Vu Tran

Writer and illustrator Thi Bui and writer Vu Tran converse with hosts Viet Thanh Nguyen and Philip Nguyen.ABOUT THE GUESTSThi Bui is a writer and artist from Việt Nam, California, and New York, now planting roots in New Orleans. Best known for her graphic memoir, The Best We Could Do, which tells the story of her family amidst Việt Nam's struggles for independence, she has also been a longtime 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.Vu Tran is the author of Dragonfish, a NYT Notable Book, and a forthcoming novel, Your Origins. His writing has also appeared in the O. Henry Prize Stories, Best American Mystery Stories, Ploughshares, Virginia Quarterly, and McSweeney’s, among other publications. He is the recipient of a Whiting Award and fellowships from the NEA, MacDowell, Yaddo, and Bread Loaf. Born in Saigon and raised in Oklahoma, Vu received his MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and his PhD from the Black Mountain Institute in Las Vegas. He teaches English and Creative Writing at the University of Chicago, where he is an Associate Professor of Practice in the Arts and director of undergraduate studies.