Thanhha Lai

Children's Author

Birthday January 1, 1965

Birth Sign Capricorn

Birthplace Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Age 59 years old

#220,213 Most Popular

About

Vietnamese-American author and writer who is best known for her children's book Inside Out & Back Again. In addition to her debut novel that won the Newbury Honor, she would continue on to release other children's novels such as Listen, Slowly, Butterfly Yellow, and Hundred Years of Happiness.

Before Fame

Her family fled Vietnam during the Fall of Saigon in the 1970's. She studied journalism at the University of Texas and later fine arts at New York University

Trivia

Her dog Pico is mentioned on her website and has even made an appearance on her Instagram page. Lai worked for 30 years on an adult novel. In her own words it was "third-person omniscient, spanning 4000 years of Vietnamese history, and whiplashed by hundreds of overly dramatic, showy sentences."

Family Life

She has six older brothers and two sisters. She is married and has a daughter. 

Associated With

Other famous authors born in Vietnam include Andrew Lam and Monique Truong.