BY CAROLINE MAO ’22
Ocean Vuong, a professor in the MFA for Poets and Writers program at UMass Amherst, has been awarded a MacArthur Fellowship with a grant of $625,000 spread over the next five years. Vuong is the author of the poetry collection “Night Sky with Exit Wounds” and the novel “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous.” He is the second writer from Northampton to win the MacArthur grant, preceded by fantasy and science fiction author Kelly Link.
Sometimes called a “genius grant,” the MacArthur Foundation lists its criteria to receive the grant as, “exceptional creativity, promise for important future advances based on a track record of significant accomplishments” and “potential for the Fellowship to facilitate subsequent creative work.” This year, the annually-awarded grant was also given to 25 others in a variety of professions, ranging from philosophy to biology to art. Past winners of the MacArthur grant include Ta-Nehisi Coates, Lin-Manuel Miranda and Alison Bechdel.
“The grant allows me to take care of my family in perpetuity — and I can do my work with commitment and dedication knowing I will be able to care for them in any catastrophe,” Vuong said to the Daily Hampshire Gazette. Vuong’s other awards include the Ruth Lilly/Sargent Rosenberg fellowship, the Pushcart Prize and the T.S. Elliot Prize.
“I was so excited to find out that Ocean Vuong received the MacArthur grant — no one could be more deserving,” Tasha Elizarde ’22 said. “Somehow, he is able to convey his identity without ever explicitly saying it; [he] let[s] you into his life without ever having to open the doorway to it. As both an Asian-American and a writer, I envy his ability but also look forward to reading his work every time.”
Elizarde is excited to attend his event at Mount Holyoke on Oct. 8, where he will read from his work alongside poets Franny Choi and Shira Erlichman as part of a celebration for Erlichman’s debut poetry collection, “Odes to Lithium.”
Vuong’s debut novel, “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous,” a bestselling coming-of-age story published last June, assumes the form of a letter from a son to his immigrant mother who cannot read.
He has also written two chapbooks, “Burning” and “No.” The MacArthur Foundation describes Vuong, a Vietnamese refugee, as “a vital new literary voice demonstrating mastery of multiple poetic registers while addressing the effects of intergenerational trauma, the refugee experience and the complexities of identity and desire.”
“It’s exciting that Ocean Vuong won a MacArthur grant, as he is a gifted writer,” Ahona Salsabil ’21 said. “It’s also inspiring how he is combining his creativity and voice to fuel his work.”
According to The Guardian, Vuong said, “I grew up surrounded by Vietnamese refugee women who used stories to create portals. I use language and literature as a way to orchestrate a framework to think and inquire about American life, including the legacy of American violence.”
Along with reading at Mount Holyoke’s Gamble Auditorium on Oct. 8, Vuong will also be holding a reading at Old Chapel in Amherst on Nov. 14, hosted by the UMass Amherst MFA program and UMass Amherst Libraries.