Ocean Vuong

Vuong attended the Glastonbury High School in Glastonbury, Connecticut, a school known for academic excellence. "I didn’t know how to make use of it," Vuong said, noting that his grade point average at one point was 1.7.

While in high school, he told fellow Glastonbury graduate Kat Chow, he "understood he had to leave Connecticut." "After spending some time at a community college, Vuong headed to Pace University, in New York, to study marketing. His time there lasted only a few weeks before he understood it wasn’t for him."

He then enrolled at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York, where he studied 19th-century English literature under poet and novelist Ben Lerner, and received his B.A. in English. He received his M.F.A. in poetry from New York University.

His first chapbook, Burnings (Sibling Rivalry Press), was a 2011 "Over The Rainbow" selection for notable books on nonheterosexuality by the American Library Association. His second chapbook, No (YesYes Books), was released in 2013. His debut full-length collection, Night Sky With Exit Wounds, was released by Copper Canyon Press in 2016; as of April that year, the publisher ran a second printing. His first novel, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, was published by Penguin Press on June 4, 2019. Writing in The New Yorker, Jia Tolentino sees the "structural hallmarks of Vuong's poetry—his skill with elision, juxtaposition, and sequencing" in the novel.

Vuong describes himself as being raised by women. His mother, a manicurist, gave him the name of Ocean. During a conversation with a customer, Vuong's mother pronounced the word "beach" as "bitch". The customer suggested she use the word "ocean" to substitute for "beach". After learning the definition of the word ocean—the most massive classified body of water, such as the Pacific Ocean, which connects the United States and Vietnam—she renamed him Ocean.

Ocean Vuong (born Vương Quốc Vinh, Vương as Vietnamese last name, Vinh as Vietnamese first name; October 14, 1988) is a Vietnamese American poet, essayist and novelist. He is a recipient of the 2014 Ruth Lilly/Sargent Rosenberg fellowship from the Poetry Foundation, a 2016 Whiting Award, and the 2017 T.S. Eliot Prize for his poetry. His debut novel, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, was published in 2019. He received a MacArthur Grant the same year.