Born in Saigon, Vietnam, Ocean Vuong is the author of the best-selling debut, Night Sky with Exit Wounds (Cape Poetry), awarded the T. S. Eliot Prize 2017 and also the winner of the Whiting Award, the Thom Gunn Award, and the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. Since being awarded the Eliot Prize, Ocean Vuong has published the New York Times bestselling novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous (Jonathan Cape, 2019) and his second poetry collection Time is a Mother (Cape Poetry, 2023). His latest novel, The Emperor of Gladness, was published in 2025. A Ruth Lilly fellow from the Poetry Foundation, his honours include fellowships from the Lannan Foundation, the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, The Elizabeth George Foundation, The Academy of American Poets, and the Pushcart Prize. He currently splits his time between Northampton, Massachusetts, and New York City, where he serves as a Professor in Modern Poetry and Poetics in the MFA Program at NYU. Author photo: Adrian Pope for the T. S. Eliot Prize
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In 2023 the T. S. Eliot Prize celebrated its 30th anniversary. We marked the occasion by looking back at the collections which have won ‘the Prize poets most want to win’ (Sir Andrew Motion). Ocean Vuong won the T. S. Eliot Prize 2017 with his debut collection Night Sky With Exit Wounds (Cape...
The T. S. Eliot Foundation is delighted to announce that this year’s winner of the T. S. Eliot Prize 2017 is Ocean Vuong for his remarkable debut collection Night Sky with Exit Wounds, published by Cape Poetry. After months of reading and deliberation, Judges W. N. Herbert (Chair), James...
To mark the 25th anniversary of the T. S. Eliot Prize, the T. S. Eliot Foundation has increased the winner’s prize money to £25,000. Judges W. N. Herbert (Chair), James Lasdun and Helen Mort have chosen the Shortlist from a record 154 poetry collections submitted by publishers. Tara Bergin, The...
