Ocean Vuong, winner of the 2015 Narrative Prize, is the author of the poetry collections Time Is a Mother and Night Sky with Exit Wounds, winner of the T. S. Eliot Prize and the Whiting Award. He is also the author of the New York Times bestselling novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, which has been translated into thirty-nine languages. Born in 1988 in Saigon, Vuong came to the United States as a refugee, settling in Hartford, Connecticut. He splits his time between Northampton, Massachusetts, and New York City, where he teaches poetry and poetics in the MFA program at New York University.

Photo credit: Tim Hines


2015 WINNER



Trojan

by Ocean Vuong

             A finger’s worth of dark from daybreak, he steps
                          into his mother’s red dress. A flame caught
                                                   in a mirror the width of a coffin. Glint of steel
in the back of his throat. A flash, a white
                                                              asterisk. Look
                                     how he dances. The sky-blue

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