Price range: $0.00 through $10.00
The author of The Best We Could Do will talk about her process for making nonfiction comics on Tuesday, April 28th, from 5-6pm PST/8-9pm EST.
In this one-hour talk, author and artist Thi Bui will talk about her approach to making emotionally rich nonfiction comics. Thi is the author of the groundbreaking graphic memoir The Best We Could Do and is currently working on a book about immigrant detention and deportation.
Thi Bui was born in Vietnam and came to the United States in 1978 as part of the “boat people” wave of refugees fleeing Southeast Asia at the end of the Vietnam War. Her debut graphic memoir, The Best We Could Do (Abrams ComicArts, 2017) has been selected for an American Book Award, a Common Book for UCLA and other colleges and universities, an all-city read by Seattle and San Francisco public libraries, a National Book Critics Circle finalist in autobiography, and an Eisner Award finalist in reality-based comics. It made over thirty best of 2017 book lists, including Bill Gates’ top five picks. She illustrated the picture book, A Different Pond, written by the poet Bao Phi (Capstone, 2017), for which she won a Caldecott Honor. With her son, Hien, she co-illustrated the children’s book, Chicken of the Sea (McSweeney’s, 2019), written by Pulitzer winner Viet Thanh Nguyen and his son, Ellison. Her short comics can be found online at The Nib, PEN America, and BOOM California. She is currently researching and drawing a work of graphic nonfiction about immigrant detention and deportation, to be published by One World, Random House.
Date:
This is an online talk that lasts for an hour on Tuesday, April 28th, from 5-6pm PST/8-9pm EST. It is free to attend but donations to Crucial are welcome to support our work. RSVP for the free Zoom link. Everyone who registers will receive a recording of the talk and be invited to join our Discord, where people can share their own comics and connect with community.
About the Artist Talk series:
In 2026, Crucial Comix is hosting a series of talks by cartoonists about their art-making process. These one-hour sessions are open to the public and all sliding scale.
To make them affordable, all of our classes and workshops are offered at a sliding scale cost.
Supporter - This payment level pitches in a little extra toward the teacher’s income and helps pay artists to create new comics at Crucial. Thanks for your support!
Standard - This is the basic rate for the class, which covers our costs.
Discount - We want people of all income levels in our classes, so choose this rate if you paying the standard rate is a stretch for you.
We set aside three spots in each class to be offered for free to people who would find it a hardship to pay the discount rate for any reason. These free spots are first-come, first-serve. If you would like to take a class for free, please send us a short email about yourself, what class you would like to take, and why. If a free spot is still available, we’ll send you a discount code to register for free! Email: editors@crucialcomix.com
