I do technical writing, creative nonfiction, and fiction—in both long form and really long form (books). I find that storytelling techniques from creative writing make technical concepts more accessible.

AI Engineering (O’Reilly, 2025)

Audiobook coming out in June 2025 on Audible.

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This book discusses AI engineering: the process of building applications with readily available foundation models. It introduces a practical framework for developing an AI application and efficiently deploying it.

It also covers how to navigate the AI landscape, including models, datasets, evaluation benchmarks, and the seemingly infinite number of use cases and application patterns.

The book is available on Amazon, Kindle and the O'Reilly platform.

It’s been the most read book on O’Reilly since its release. See what people are talking about the book on Twitter @aisysbooks!

It’s currently being translated into Chinese, French, Japanese, Korean, Polish, and Russian.

Designing Machine Learning Systems (O’Reilly, 2022)

Audiobook coming out in July 2025 on Audible.

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This book discusses a holistic approach to designing ML systems. It considers each design decision—such as how to process and create training data, which features to use, how often to retrain models, and what to monitor—in the context of how it can help your system as a whole achieve its objectives. The iterative framework in this book uses actual case studies backed by ample references.

Here's its GitHub repo with the full table of contents, chapter summaries, and some thoughts around tooling. See what people are talking about the book on Twitter @aisysbooks!

The book has been translated into 10+ languages including Spanish, Japanese, Korean, Polish, and Thai.

The book is available on Amazon (US, India, + other countries), Kindle, O’Reilly, and almost everywhere where technical books are sold.

Machine Learning Interviews (2021)

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This book was written with the candidates in mind, but hiring managers who saw the early drafts have told me that they find the book useful to learn how other companies are hiring and rethink their own process. The book is free and open-source.

The book is being updated and will be incorporated into MVAIE, the minimum viable AIE curriculum!


Creative writing

Writing a story is like playing a game. You have to step into the mind of each character and anticipate not just what they’ll do next, but what their opponents will do too—and how every interaction will shift the dynamics between them.

Entanglements That Never End (Alexandria Song, 2025)

The book will officially come out in September 2025, but you can find an early release ebook on Kindle. See early reader reviews on Goodreads.

At eighteen, Linh thought she could outmaneuver anyone. Born to a powerful and authoritative father, she tried to distance herself from him using the very techniques he had taught her.

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When she met Quan, his perfect self-control and strategic mind caught her attention. Despite being six years younger, she approached, tested, and pursued him. The relationship slowly, almost imperceptibly, slipped beyond her control into an entanglement that blurred the lines between love, obsession, and manipulation.

This psychologically nuanced coming-of-age story follows a morally complex young woman over fourteen years, from a rebellious teenager to a successful businesswoman, weaving between past trauma and present ambition. It explores Linh's relationships with family, business, and messy romance, forcing her to face the devastating emotional consequences of reducing every human interaction, even love, to a calculation.

Early reader reviews

See more on Goodreads.

“Linh was such a compelling protagonist. Logical, driven, and ambitious, yet she still allowed space for love to grow. Her relationship with Quan was messy, toxic, and utterly captivating. I loved that Linh was fully aware of who he was and what he had done, yet she was still drawn to his intelligence, talent, and ambition. She simply understood him.”

“I didn’t see it coming, I felt stupid as she did. All is not fair in love and war, I definitely don’t agree. Be prepared for the reeling suspense and I hope you don’t share the scars that Linh had. This book would definitely teach you a thing or two about the games people play.”

“It’s an addictive, smartly written story full of strategy, romance, twists, and just the right dose of reality. If you love well-crafted storytelling with a mix of heart and intellect, this one’s definitely for you!”

“Pretty suspenseful.. and feels a bit dark too!”

“Having visited Hanoi for the first time, I find this story of recent experience and culture very interesting and fun.”

Interested? You can buy the book now on Kindle or join our early access program.

Audiobook coming soon! Sign up for early audio release here.

Creative non-fiction

Outside of technical writing, I’ve also published four books in Vietnam which have sold more than 100,000 copies. My first book was Tiki.vn’s #1 best-selling book of 2012. My first two books were among FAHASA Top 10 Readers’ Choice Books 2014.

Chip Huyen’s books on Goodreads

Xách Ba Lô Lên Và Đi - Tập 1: Châu Á Là Nhà. Đừng Khóc! Xách Ba Lô Lên Và Đi - Tập 1: Châu Á Là Nhà. Đừng Khóc!
reviews: 164
ratings: 1332 (avg rating 3.85)

Giấc mơ Mỹ - Đường đến Stanford Giấc mơ Mỹ - Đường đến Stanford
reviews: 187
ratings: 850 (avg rating 4.02)

Tuổi Trẻ Không Hối Tiếc Tuổi Trẻ Không Hối Tiếc
reviews: 145
ratings: 541 (avg rating 4.32)

Xách Ba Lô lên Và Đi - Tập 2: Đừng Chết Ở Châu Phi Xách Ba Lô lên Và Đi - Tập 2: Đừng Chết Ở Châu Phi
reviews: 62
ratings: 582 (avg rating 3.89)

Stories

Most of my writing is creative non-fiction, but occassionally, I indulge myself in the fictional world. Here are some of my old writing samples.

Anything I want
Even after you’ve washed them away, in the water that you take from the big tank Mom saves for cooking, there’s still that bitter, lemony taste on what is left.

Unnamed
It was the end of my second year and I was already sick of school. Sick, sick, sick, sick. A sophomore with the soul of a 5th year post-doc.