This event is being held virtually. Please register via zoom directly ***here***.

Ocean Vuong is the author of the critically acclaimed poetry collection Night Sky with Exit Wounds and the New York Times bestselling novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. A recipient of the 2019 MacArthur “Genius” Grant, he is also the winner of the Whiting Award and the T.S. Eliot Prize. His writings have been featured in The Atlantic, Harper's Magazine,The Nation,The New Republic, The New Yorker, and The New York Times. Born in Saigon, Vietnam, he currently lives in Northampton, Massachusetts. (Photo credit, Tom Hines)

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, it navigates a family’s history that began before he was born—a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam—and becomes a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known. The son serves as witness to his mother’s story, from her undeniable love for her family and her determination to survive in Vietnam, then in the United States, to her struggles with mental health and unflinching accounts of her physical abuse. As he unearths his family’s journey to present day, as he seeks understanding, it leads to an unforgettable revelation about what it means to tell your own story—and the silence of going unheard. What happens to language and storytelling as a tool of communication when a listener is not promise?

Professor Sandra Lim, Ph.D., prize-winning poet, and professor of English at the University of Massachusetts in Lowell will be interviewing Ocean.

This program is presented in partnership with the public libraries in Andover, Boxford, Carlisle, Chelmsford, Danvers, Dracut, Groton, Groveland, Holden, Lowell, Methuen, Newburyport, South Hamilton, Tewksbury, and West Newbury.