Order of Ocean Vuong Books

Ocean Vuong is the author who burst onto the scene with this 2019 debut novel, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. Vuong is also a well-respected poet whose debut full-length collection, Night Sky With Exit Wounds, was the winner of multiple awards.

Vuong was born on a rice farm in Vietnam before his family immigrated to the United States two years later. The family ended up in Hartford, Connecticut and Vuong ended up being the first person in his family to learn to read. Vuong attended Brooklyn College where he received his B.A. in Nineteenth Century English Literature. He studied under poet and novelist Ben Lerner which led to a similar career for Vuong. Ocean had his poem and essays published in numerous magazines and journals including The Rumpus, The New Yorker, New Republic, and the New York Times. In addition to his work as a poet and writer, Vuong is an Assistant Professor in the MFA Program for Writers at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Collections

Publication Order of Anthologies

If You Like Ocean Vuong Books, You’ll Love…

• Colson Whitehead
• Sally Rooney
• Toni Morrison

Vuong’s debut On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is told as a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. The writer, Little Dog, writes the letter in his late twenties and tells the family history that began before he was born and builds into an unforgettable revelation. The book is both a family love story between a single mother and her son while also exploring issues of race, class, and masculinity. The book was praised as doing a great job of asking how we can heal and rescue one another without giving up who we are.

Night Sky with Exit Wounds is Vuong’s debut poetry collection that is an interrogation of the American body as a borderless space of both failure and triumph.