When Monique Truong (pronounced Trurn) was six years old, she came to the United States as a refugee from S. Vietnam. She and her family then lived in North Carolina, Ohio, and Texas. She is the bestselling author of The Book of Salt, which was a New York Times Notable Book, a PEN/Robert W. Bingham Fellowship winner, a Stonewall Book Awards – Barbara Gittings Literature Award winner, among countless others. She is also the author of Bitter in the Mouth, which received the American Academy of Arts and Letters Rosenthal Family Foundation Award, and The Sweetest Fruits, named a best fiction of 2019 by Publishers Weekly. Her home is now in Brooklyn, New York, where she writes novels and libretti, always cooks enough to have leftovers, and takes long afternoon naps. She was also once a lawyer with degrees from Columbia Law School and Yale College. Mai’s Áo Dài is her debut picture book.