An Evening with Ocean Vuong

Ocean Vuong is one of the most acclaimed literary voices of his generation. A recipient of the MacArthur “Genius Grant” and the American Book Award, Vuong was born in Saigon and raised in Connecticut to a working-class family of nail salon and factory labourers. Hailed as a “mightily gifted observer” (New York Times), Vuong transforms elements of his life—the legacy of his family’s escape from Vietnam, the connections he made as a fast-food server—into profound stories of identity, family, and survival, that ultimately seek to understand suffering and the depths of humanity.

Vuong’s poetry collections, Night Sky with Exit Wounds and Time is a Mother, earned him some of poetry’s highest honours, including the T.S. Eliot Award and Whiting Award. However, it was Vuong’s “devastatingly beautiful first novel,” (NPR) On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, that cemented his status as one of literature’s next great writers. Winner of the Mark Twain Prize and the American Book Award and nominated for the National Book Award, the novel has sold over two million copies and been translated into 41 languages.

Vuong’s sophomore novel, The Emperor of Gladness, is an instant New York Times bestseller, with The Guardian praising it as “’heartbreaking, heartwarming yet unsentimental, and savagely comic all at the same time.”

With his prophetic gifts as a poet, Vuong writes novels with beautiful prose and heart-rending empathy.

Join us for Vuong’s first Vancouver appearance as he engages in a wide-ranging conversation to discuss his acclaimed body of work.