A 2019 MacArthur Fellow, Ocean Vuong was born in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, came to the United States as a refugee at age two, and grew up in Hartford, Connecticut. He earned a BA from Brooklyn College and an MFA from New York University. His debut poetry collection, Night Sky with Exit Wounds (Copper Canyon Press, 2016), won the T.S. Eliot Prize, the Whiting Award, and the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. His novel On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous (Penguin, 2019) was a New York Times bestseller, followed by The Emperor of Gladness (Penguin Press, 2025). He is a professor in the Creative Writing Program at New York University.
