About Thanhha Lai

Thanhha Lai was born in Vietnam. At the end of the war, she fled with her family to Alabama. There, she learned English from fourth graders and then spent the next decade correcting her grammar. Starting her writing life as a journalist, she worked at The Orange County Register. She switched to fiction, leading to an MFA from New York University and short story publications in various journals and anthologies. Then came "Inside Out & Back Again", a National Book Award and Newbery Honor-winning verse novel based in part on her childhood as a refugee in Alabama. Next was "Listen, Slowly", another middle grade novel featuring a young Vietnamese-American girl. Her most recent work, "Butterfly Yellow", is also her first foray into the YA genre. Lai lives with her husband, daughter and a little white dog in New York City.