Poetry Reading: Ocean Vuong

Poet and essayist Ocean Vuong was born in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, in 1988 and immigrated to the United States in 1990, is the author of the best-selling book Night Sky with Exit Wounds, which won the 2016 Whiting Award. A Ruth Lilly fellow from the Poetry Foundation, he has received honors from the Lannan Foundation, the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, The Elizabeth George Foundation, The Academy of American Poets, and the Pushcart Prize. ; Vuong’s writings have been featured in The Atlantic, The Nation, New Republic, The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Village Voice, and American Poetry Review, which awarded him the Stanley Kunitz Prize for Younger Poets. Selected by Foreign Policy magazine as a 2016 100 Leading Global Thinkers, alongside Hillary Clinton, Ban Ki-Moon and Warsan Shire, Ocean was also named by BuzzFeed Books as one of “32 Essential Asian American Writers” and has been profiled on NPR’s All Things Considered, PBS NewsHour, Teen Vogue, The New Yorker, and VICE. ; This event is sponsored by Department of English and Communication Studies and the School of Liberal Arts.