Ocean Vuong, an award-winning poet, will join the Faculty of Arts & Science as a Professor of Creative Writing this fall.
Ocean Vuong, an award-winning poet, will join the Faculty of Arts & Science at New York University as a Professor of Creative Writing this fall.
Vuong is the author of two collections of poetry—most recently, Time Is a Mother (Penguin Press, 2022)—as well as a New York Times bestselling novel, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous (Penguin Press 2019), which has been translated into 36 languages. A previous collection of his verses, Night Sky with Exit Wounds (Copper Canyon Press, 2016), was the winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize, the Whiting Award, the Thom Gunn Award, and the Forward Prize for Best First Collection.
A recipient of a 2019 MacArthur “Genius” Grant, Vuong is currently a Distinguished Writer in Residence at NYU and was previously an associate professor in the MFA Program for Poets and Writers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. His appointment as a tenured faculty member in NYU’s Creative Writing Program begins September 1, 2022.
“It is our great honor to welcome our alumnus Ocean Vuong as a colleague,” said Antonio Merlo, dean of the Faculty of Arts & Science at NYU. “The students and community of internationally acclaimed writers that make up our Creative Writing Program are richer for his phenomenal talent, distinctive voice, and the vital connection he makes with broad-ranging fans of his work.”
Named by BuzzFeed Books as one of “32 Essential Asian American Writers,” Vuong was born in Saigon and raised in Hartford, Connecticut. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Brooklyn College and an MFA in poetry from NYU.
“Ocean Vuong is a major talent, an internationally celebrated writer, and an essential and singular literary voice,” said Deborah Landau, director of NYU’s Creative Writing Program. “He’s also an exceptionally gifted teacher and inspiring mentor for our students. We’re thrilled he’s joined our community at the Lillian Vernon Creative Writers House.”
Vuong’s writings have also been featured in the Atlantic, Granta, Harpers, the Nation, the New Republic, the New Yorker, the New York Times, and the Paris Review, among other publications.
Editor’s Note:
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