Ocean Vuong
Ocean Vuong (born Vương Quốc Vinh, Vietnamese: [vɨəŋ˧ kuək˧˥ viɲ˧]; October 14, 1988) is a Vietnamese American poet, essayist, and novelist. Vuong is a recipient of the 2014 Ruth Lilly/Sargent Rosenberg fellowship from the Poetry Foundation, a 2016 Whiting Award, and the 2017 T.S. Eliot Prize for his poetry. His debut novel, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, was published in 2019. He received a MacArthur Grant the same year.
Ocean Vuong | |
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Born | Vương Quốc Vinh[1] October 14, 1988 Hồ Chí Minh City, Vietnam |
Occupation | Poet, writer, professor |
Education | Brooklyn College (BA) New York University (MFA) |
Genre | Poetry, essays, novel |
Notable works |
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Notable awards | |
Website | |
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Early life
Vuong was born in Hồ Chí Minh City, Vietnam.[2] His grandmother grew up in the Vietnamese countryside, and his grandfather was a white American Navy soldier, originally from Michigan. His grandparents met during the Vietnam War, married, and had three children, including Vuong's mother. His grandfather had gone back to visit home in the U.S. but was unable to return when Saigon fell to communist forces. His grandmother separated his mother and aunts in orphanages, concerned for their survival. They fled Vietnam after a police officer came to suspect that his mother was of mixed heritage, leaving her prone to discrimination by the regime's labour policies at the time.[3]

Two-year-old Vuong and his family eventually arrived in a refugee camp in the Philippines before achieving asylum and migrating to the United States, settling in Hartford, Connecticut, alongside six relatives. His father abandoned the family after this. Vuong was reunited with his paternal grandfather later in life.[4][5][6][3] Vuong, who suspects dyslexia runs in his family,[3] was the first in his family to learn to read,[6] at the age of eleven.[5] At 15 years old, Vuong worked on a tobacco farm illegally and would later describe his experiences on the farm in On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous.[7]
Education
Vuong attended Glastonbury High School in Glastonbury, Connecticut, a school known for academic excellence. "I didn’t know how to make use of it," Vuong has stated, noting that his grade point average at one point was 1.7.[8]
While in high school, he told fellow Glastonbury graduate Kat Chow he "understood he had to leave Connecticut." After spending some time at Manchester Community College, Vuong headed to Pace University in New York to study marketing. His time there lasted only a few weeks before he understood it "wasn’t for him."[9]
He then enrolled at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York, where he studied 19th-century English literature under poet and novelist Ben Lerner, and received his B.A. in English.[10][11] He received his M.F.A. in poetry from New York University.
Career

Vuong's poems and essays have been published in various journals, including Poetry,[4] The Nation,[12] TriQuarterly,[13] Guernica,[14] The Rumpus,[15] Boston Review,[16] Narrative Magazine, The New Republic, The New Yorker, and The New York Times.[17]
His first chapbook, Burnings (Sibling Rivalry Press), was a 2011 "Over The Rainbow" selection for notable books on non-heterosexuality by the American Library Association.[18] His second chapbook, No (YesYes Books), was released in 2013.[19] His debut full-length collection, Night Sky with Exit Wounds,[20] was released by Copper Canyon Press in 2016. As of April that year, the publisher ran a second printing.[21] His first novel, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, was published by Penguin Press on June 4, 2019. While working on the novel, the biggest issue Vuong had was with grammatical tense, since there are no past participles in Vietnamese. Vuong also regarded the book as a "phantom novel" dedicated to the "phantom readership of the mother, of [his] family," who are illiterate and thus cannot read his book.[22] Vuong’s mother was diagnosed with breast cancer three months before the publication of On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous.[23] After his mother died in 2019, Vuong began writing his second collection of poetry, Time is a Mother, which has been described as a “search for life after the death of his mother."[24]
In August 2020, Vuong was revealed as the seventh writer to contribute to the Future Library project. The project, which compiles original works by writers each year from 2014 to 2114, will remain unread until the collected 100 works are eventually published in 2114. Discussing his contribution to the project, Vuong opined that, "So much of publishing is about seeing your name in the world, but this is the opposite, putting the future ghost of you forward. You and I will have to die in order for us to get these texts. That is a heady thing to write towards, so I will sit with it a while.”[25]
Vuong has stated his view of fiction as a moral vehicle. Discussing On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, he said: "Fiction is strongest when it launches a moral question. When it goes out and seeks to answer. The questions that we couldn’t ask in life because the costs would be too much. Fiction and narrative art give us a vicarious opportunity to see these questions play out, at no true cost to our own."[26]
He served as the 2019-2020 Artist-In-Resident at NYU's Asian/Pacific/American Institute, also working with the school's Center for Refugee Poetics and the Lillian Vernon Creative Writers House.[27][28] In 2022, he became a tenured Professor of Creative Writing at NYU, and has also taught in the MFA Program for Poets and Writers at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.[29][30][27][31]
Vuong was named as one of "32 Essential Asian American Writers" by Buzzfeed Books.[27]
Awards and fellowships
Award | Year | Citation |
---|---|---|
Academy of American Poets University and College Poetry Prize | 2010 | [32] |
Stanley Kunitz Prize for Younger Poets | 2012 | [33] |
Kundiman Fellowship | 2012 | [34] |
The Elizabeth George Foundation Fellowship | 2013 | [35] |
Chad Walsh Prize, Beloit Poetry Journal | 2013 | [36] |
The Pushcart Prize | 2014 | [37] |
Ruth Lilly/Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship | 2014 | [38] |
The Narrative Prize | 2015 | [39] |
Whiting Award for Poetry | 2016 | [40] |
Forward Prize for Poetry Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection | 2017 | [41] |
T. S. Eliot Prize | 2017 | [42][4] |
MacArthur Fellow | 2019 | [43] |
Dylan Thomas Prize - Shortlisted for On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous | 2020 | [44] |
NAAAP Pride Award | 2020 | [45] |
Griffin Poetry Prize - shortlisted for Time Is a Mother | 2023 | [46] |
Personal life
Vuong has described himself as being raised by women. During a conversation with a customer, his mother, a manicurist, expressed a desire to go to the beach, and pronounced the word "beach" as "bitch." The customer suggested she use the word "ocean" instead of "beach." After learning the definition of the word "ocean" — the most massive classified body of water, such as the Pacific Ocean, which connects the United States and Vietnam — she renamed her son Ocean.[5]
In November 2021, an excerpt from On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous was featured in that year's New South Wales Higher School Certificate exams. The paper, the first of two English exams taken by year twelve students in the Australian state, required examinees to read an excerpt from the novel and answer a short question responding to it. On the exam's conclusion, Australian school students bombarded Vuong with confused inquiries via Instagram, to which the author responded in humorous fashion.[47]
Vuong is openly gay,[7] and is a practicing Zen Buddhist.[48]
Vuong lives in Northampton, Massachusetts, with his partner and his half-brother whom he took in after their mother's death.[49][31]
Bibliography
Novels
- On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous (Penguin Press, 2019). OCLC 1052450975
Collections
- Night Sky with Exit Wounds (Copper Canyon Press, 2016). OCLC 1023185217
- Time Is a Mother (Penguin Press, 2022). OCLC 1313513180
Chapbooks
- Burnings (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2010). OCLC 1001862161
- No (YesYes Books, 2013). OCLC 878505119
List of poems
Title | Year | First published |
---|---|---|
Trevor | 2016 | Vuong, Ocean (March 25, 2016). "Trevor".[50] Buzzfeed. |
Someday I'll love Ocean Vuong | 2015 | Vuong, Ocean (May 4, 2015). "Someday I'll love Ocean Vuong". The New Yorker. Vol. 91, no. 11. pp. 50–51. |
Scavengers | 2016 | Vuong, Ocean (November 7, 2016). "Scavengers". The New Yorker. Vol. 92, no. 36. p. 51. |
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous | 2014 | Vuong, Ocean (December 2014). Poetry magazine. Winter 2014–2015. |
See also
References
- "A Vessel for Peace: An Interview with Writer Ocean Vuong". The Well&Often Reader. February 2013.
- Nguyễn, Kevin (October 16, 2013). "Eavesdropping on Ocean Vương's New Book". The New York Times.
- Armitstead, Claire (October 3, 2017). "War baby: the amazing story of Ocean Vuong, former refugee and prize-winning poet". the Guardian. Retrieved October 3, 2018.
- "Ocean Vuong". Poetry Foundation. Poetry Foundation. May 11, 2018. Retrieved May 12, 2018.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: others (link) - "How a Poet Named Ocean Means to Fix the English Language". The New Yorker. April 7, 2016. Retrieved June 28, 2017.
- "Review: 'Night Sky With Exit Wounds,' Verses From Ocean Vuong". The New York Times. May 9, 2016. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved May 12, 2018.
- "Ocean Vuong: The TNB Self-Interview". August 1, 2011. Archived from the original on January 26, 2021. Retrieved June 28, 2019.
- Kat Chow, "Going Home With Ocean Vuong," The Atlantic, 4 June 2019, accessed 2020-5-15.
- Kat Chow, "Going Home With Ocean Vuong."
- "Brooklyn College | Ocean Sounds: A Brooklyn College Alumnus Reflects on His Life". Brooklyn.cuny.edu. June 5, 2012. Retrieved August 28, 2016.
- "Brooklyn College | Mentoring Demands Respect, Says Ben Lerner About His Work with Ocean Vuong". Brooklyn.cuny.edu. June 14, 2013. Retrieved August 28, 2016.
- Vuong, Ocean (January 28, 2014). "Eurydice". The Nation. Retrieved August 28, 2016.
{{cite magazine}}
: Cite magazine requires|magazine=
(help) - "|". Triquarterly.org. July 15, 2014. Retrieved August 28, 2016.
- "Ocean Vuong: I Remember Anyway – Guernica / A Magazine of Art & Politics". Guernicamag.com. June 14, 2013. Retrieved August 28, 2016.
- "Ocean Vuong". The Rumpus.net. August 28, 2014. Retrieved August 28, 2016.
- "Poet's Sampler: Ocean Vuong". Boston Review. September 8, 2014. Retrieved August 28, 2016.
- "Ocean Vuong". as.nyu.edu. Retrieved May 12, 2018.
- "2012 Over the Rainbow List–74 LGBT Books for Adult Readers! – Over the Rainbow Books". Glbtrt.ala.org. January 22, 2012. Retrieved August 28, 2016.
- "yesyesbooks". yesyesbooks. Archived from the original on October 20, 2016. Retrieved August 28, 2016.
- "Night Sky With Exit Wounds, Poetry by Ocean Vuong". Copper Canyon Press. Retrieved August 28, 2016.
- "Copper Canyon Press – Timeline". Facebook. Retrieved August 28, 2016.
- Spiegel, Amy Rose. "On being generous in your work". The Creative Independent. Archived from the original on May 29, 2022. Retrieved July 7, 2022.
- "Grieving His Mother's Death, Ocean Vuong Learned to Write for Himself". Time. March 30, 2022. Retrieved March 13, 2023.
- Mosley, Tonya (April 5, 2022). "Poet Ocean Vuong sifts through the aftershock of grief in 'Time Is a Mother'". npr.org.
- "'You'll have to die to get these texts': Ocean Vuong's next manuscript to be unveiled in 2114". The Guardian. August 19, 2020. Retrieved October 24, 2020.
- "Ocean Vuong on the Moral Questions of Fiction: This Week on the Talk Easy Podcast with Sam Fragoso". Literary Hub. May 23, 2023. Retrieved May 25, 2023.
- "Award-Winning Poet Ocean Vuong to Join NYU's Creative Writing Program Faculty". New York University. June 15, 2022. Retrieved August 24, 2023.
- "Ocean Vuong, Artist-in-Residence". A/P/A Institute at NYU. Retrieved August 24, 2023.
- "Ocean Vuong".
- "About".
- Hsu, Hua (April 10, 2022). "Ocean Vuong is Still Learning". The New Yorker. Retrieved August 24, 2023.
- aapone (December 31, 1979). "University & College Poetry Prizes". University & College Poetry Prizes. Retrieved October 3, 2018.
- "Ocean Vuong – 2012 Stanley Kunitz Memorial Prizediacritics.org". October 18, 2014. Archived from the original on October 18, 2014. Retrieved October 3, 2018.
- "Fellows". Kundiman. Archived from the original on November 10, 2012. Retrieved June 8, 2023.
- "The Elizabeth George Foundation". Elizabethgeorgeonline.com. Retrieved August 28, 2016.
- "Ocean Vuong wins the 2013 Beloit Poetry Journal Chad Walsh Poetry Prize". November 14, 2013. Retrieved October 3, 2018.
- "Welcome to Pushcart Press: Publishers of The Pushcart Prize". Pushcartprize.com. Retrieved August 28, 2016.
- "Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowships". Poetry Foundation. Retrieved August 28, 2016.
- "Ocean Vuong – Narrative Magazine". September 8, 2014. Retrieved October 3, 2018.
- "Ocean Vuong". www.whiting.org. Retrieved October 3, 2018.
- "Congratulations to the Forward Prize winners – The Poetry Society". poetrysociety.org.uk. Retrieved October 3, 2018.
- Cain, Sian (January 15, 2018). "TS Eliot prize goes to Ocean Vuong's 'compellingly assured' debut collection". the Guardian. Retrieved October 3, 2018.
- "Ocean Vuong – Class of 2019". MacArthur Foundation. September 25, 2019. Retrieved September 25, 2019.
- "Dylan Thomas Prize 2020 shortlist announced". Books+Publishing. April 8, 2020. Retrieved April 8, 2020.
- "Awards: NAAAP100, Inspire, Pride | National Association of Asian American Professionals". www.naaap.org. Retrieved August 17, 2020.
- Cassandra Drudi, "Susan Musgrave, Iman Mersal among Griffin Poetry Prize finalists". Quill & Quire, April 19, 2023.
- "'What the hell is an HSC exam?' Poet Ocean Vuong pokes fun at perplexed Australian students". The Guardian. November 11, 2021. Retrieved April 19, 2022.
- "What Scares Writer and Zen Buddhist Ocean Vuong". August 16, 2017.
- "oceanvuong". oceanvuong. Retrieved March 11, 2018.
- "Poem: "Trevor" By Ocean Vuong". BuzzFeed News. March 24, 2016.
External links
Media related to Ocean Vuong at Wikimedia Commons
Quotations related to Ocean Vuong at Wikiquote
- Official website