We welcome award winning author Ocean Vuong (Night Sky with Exit Wounds) for a reading of his highly acclaimed debut novel, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, named a best book of summer by The Washington Post, Publishers Weekly, Vulture, Thrillist, Entertainment Weekly, Elle, and more.

“In this achingly beautiful novel, a young Vietnamese American writes a letter to his abusive mother about his struggle to find love and a sense of identity. In the process, he comes to appreciate the struggles of her life, too.” —The Washington Post

Ocean Vuong is the author of the critically acclaimed poetry collection Night Sky with Exit Wounds, winner of the Whiting Award and the T.S. Eliot Prize. His writings have also been featured in The Atlantic, Harper’s, The Nation, New Republic, The New Yorker, and The New York Times. Born in Saigon, Vietnam, he currently lives in Northampton, Massachusetts. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is his first novel.

Ocean Vuong’s poetry collection, Night Sky with Exit Wounds, marked the arrival of an incomparable talent. His searing, intimate poems, infused with his love of language, grappled with memories of war and displacement, coming of age as a young gay man, and daily life in Vietnam and America. Named a best book of 2016 by dozens of outlets from The New York Times to NPR to The San Francisco Chronicle, the collection was also the recipient of the T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry and the Whiting Award. Readers and critics alike fell in love with Vuong’s lyricism and the deep humanity that runs through all his work.

This free event will take place at Bookshop Santa Cruz. Chairs for open seating are usually set up about an hour before the event begins. If you have any ADA accommodation requests, please e-mail info@bookshopsantacruz.com by June 15th.