Oanh Thu Thi Ly was born in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. She immigrated to America as a boat refugee and grew up in Houston, Texas. She studied playwriting at the University of Texas at Austin where she was a recipient of a James Michener Playwriting Fellowship.
She started her TV writing career on the hit CBS crime show Criminal Minds. Other broadcast credits include the Bad Robot/NBC show Revolution, The Messengers for CW, Black Box for ABC, and The Catch for Shondaland/ABC. Streaming credits include Sweet Tooth and the entire run ofThe Chilling Adventures of Sabrina.
Currently, she is writing a TV pilot based on an Archie Comics for Warner Brothers Studios with fellow Vietnamese Texan, Viet Nguyen. She mentors young writers at the Blank Theatre Young Playwrights Festival, where she got her start in Los Angeles over twenty years ago.
She lives in Culver City with her husband, Ron, and daughter, Linh. Her favorite Vietnamese foods are banh xeo, che ba mau, che troi nuoc, banh cuon and bun bo hue.