Visiting Writers Series Presents Author Ocean Vuong for Reading and Book Signing

*** MEDIA ADVISORY ***

DATE:       Thursday, Nov. 14, 2019
TIME:        8 p.m.
WHAT:      Visiting Writers Series presents author Ocean Vuong
WHERE:   Fine Arts Concert Hall, 151 Presidents Drive, Amherst, MA 01003
WHO:        MacArthur Genius and University of Massachusetts Amherst Assistant Professor Ocean Vuong

AMHERST, Mass.— The University of Massachusetts Amherst MFA for Poets and Writers presents a reading by Ocean Vuong. Vuong lives in Northampton, Massachusetts, where he serves as an assistant professor in the MFA Program for Poets and Writers at UMass Amherst. The reading will be followed by a book signing and refreshments. This reading is co-sponsored by the UMass Libraries. 

Vuong's writings have been featured in The Atlantic, Harpers, The Nation, New Republic, The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Village Voice, and American Poetry Review, which awarded him the Stanley Kunitz Prize for Younger Poets. He was selected by Foreign Policy Magazine as one of the 100 Leading Global Thinkers of 2016, alongside Hillary Clinton and Ban Ki-Moon. Vuong was named by BuzzFeed Books as one of “32 Essential Asian American Writers” and has been profiled on NPR’s “All Things Considered,” PBS NewsHour, Teen Vogue, VICE, The Fantastic Man, and The New Yorker.

Vuong, the author of the debut novel, “On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous,” is a 2019 MacArthur "Genius” Grant recipient and author of the critically acclaimed poetry collection, “Night Sky with Exit Wounds.” He has also received the T.S. Eliot Prize, the Whiting Award, the Thom Gunn Award, and the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. A Ruth Lilly fellow from the Poetry Foundation, his honors include fellowships from the Lannan Foundation, the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, The Elizabeth George Foundation, The Academy of American Poets and the Pushcart Prize.

Celebrating its 55th year, the nationally renowned Visiting Writers Series at UMass Amherst presents emerging and established writers of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. The Series is sponsored by the MFA for Poets and Writers and the Juniper Initiative, and made possible by support from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the University of Massachusetts Arts Council, the English department, the women, gender, and sexuality studies department, the comparative literature department and others.