Thanhha Lai, BJ UT Austin 1988 and former The Daily Texan staffer, won the 2011 National Book Foundation award for best young people's literature with Inside Out & Back Again, fiction based on her early life in Vietnam.

Inside Out & Back Again (Harper) is her first book.

Thanhha Lai was born in Vietnam in 1965. When North Vietnam won the war in 1975, her family escaped to the United States, landing in Alabama because that's where her family's sponsor lived. She spoke no English. Over time, the family relocated to Fort Worth, where she graduated from high school. After graduating from UT, she was a reporter with the Orange County (Calif.) Register. She later moved to New York and received her MFA from the New York University. 

She lives in New York City with her husband and daughter. She is on the faculty at Parsons School of Design.

Inside Out & Back Again is based on Lai's childhood experiences. 

For all the 10 years of her life, the book's main character, Hà, has only known Saigon: the thrills of its markets, the joy of its traditions, the warmth of her friends close by—and the beauty of her very own papaya tree. But now the Vietnam War has reached her home. Hà and her family are forced to flee as Saigon falls, and they board a ship headed toward hope. In America, Hà discovers the foreign world of Alabama: the coldness of its strangers, the dullness of its food, the strange shape of its landscape—and the strength of her very own family.

This is the story of one girl's year of change, dreams, grief, and healing as she journeys from one country to another, one life to the next.