Burnings (2010) • No (2013) • Night Sky with Exit Wounds (2016) • On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous (2019) • king philip (2020) • Time Is a Mother (2022) • The Emperor of Gladness (2024) •
Ocean Vuong (born 1988 in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam) is a Vietnamese American poet, essayist, and novelist whose work explores themes of identity, diaspora, queerness, family, love, and the aftermath of war. He immigrated to the United States as a child and grew up in Hartford, Connecticut. Vuong’s debut poetry collection, Night Sky with Exit Wounds (2016), won the T.S. Eliot Prize, the Whiting Award, and the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, earning international acclaim for its lyrical intensity and emotional depth. In 2019, he published his debut novel, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, a critically acclaimed, epistolary work blending fiction and autobiography, which became a New York Times bestseller and was translated into over thirty languages. His second poetry collection, Time Is a Mother (2022), reflects on grief, memory, and renewal following the death of his mother. Vuong is also a recipient of a MacArthur “Genius” Grant and teaches at the University of Massachusetts Amherst’s MFA Program for Poets and Writers.
Due to the pandemic Ocean handed his manuscript King Philip to the Future Library in 2022 in a joint ceremony. This work was preceded by On Earth We’re Breifly Gorgeous in 2019 and followed by Time Is a Mother (2022).