Lê Thi Diem Thúy left Vietnam on a boat with her father in 1978 and grew up in San Diego, California. In 1990, she moved to Massachusetts and enrolled in Hampshire College. After graduating in 1993, Thúy traveled to Paris to research French colonial picture postcards made in the early 1900's.
Today, she is an author and performance artist based in Northampton. She recently finished a one-year Radcliffe fellowship and has been on the road performing her one-woman show "Red Fiery Summer."
She is currently working on a new novel entitled The Bodies Between Us.