Vuong’s first novel, On Earth we’re Briefly Gorgeous, was published in 30 languages in 2019 to critical and popular acclaim, after which he was awarded the MacArthur “Genius” Grant, an award that invests in the future work of gifted intellectuals. That same year he was awarded the Whiting Award, an annual prize awarded to promising poets and writers. In 2016, Vuong published his first full-length book of poetry, Night Sky with Exit Wounds. Later, in 2014, he was awarded the Ruth Lilly fellowship from the Poetry Foundation, which seeks to promote poetry and culture. He published his first chapbook (meaning a small booklet), Burnings, in 2011. Vuong went on to earn a degree in 19th-century English Literature from Brooklyn College and an MFA in poetry from New York University. In 1990, Vuong’s family fled Vietnam to a refugee camp in the Philippines and later settled in Hartford, Connecticut. After the Fall of Saigon and the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, however, Vuong’s grandfather went back home to the United States to visit his family and was unable to return again to Vietnam. Vuong’s grandparents were married and had three children. Like Little Dog in On Earth we’re Briefly Gorgeous, Vuong’s maternal grandfather was a white American naval officer stationed in Vietnam during the war. Ocean Vuong was born in Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon, in 1988, but grew up on a rural farm.
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