Mai Nguyen is a Vietnamese Canadian author based in Toronto. Her debut novel Sunshine Nails was longlisted for Canada Reads in 2024, and was selected as one of the best books of 2023 by NPR and CBC. Her second book, Cleo Dang Would Rather Be Dead, has received multiple starred reviews including from Kirkus Reviews, which called it “An astonishing portrait of grief and an ode to the beauty that manages to live in its midst.” She was raised in Halifax, and now lives in Toronto.