An instant New York Times Bestseller! Longlisted for the 2019 National Book Award for Fiction, the Carnegie Medal in Fiction, the 2019 Aspen Words Literacy Prize, and the PEN/Hemingway Debut Novel AwardShortlisted for the 2019 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize Winner of the 2019 New England Book Award for Fiction! Named one of the most anticipated books of 2019 by Vulture, Entertainment Weekly, Buzzfeed, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Oprah.com, Huffington Post, The A.V. Club, Nylon, The Week, The Rumpus, The Millions, The Guardian, Publishers Weekly, and more."A lyrical work of self-discovery that's shockingly intimate and insistently universal…Not so much briefly gorgeous as permanently stunning." -Ron Charles, The Washington PostPoet Ocean Vuong's debut novel is a shattering portrait of a family, a first love, and the redemptive power of storytellingOn Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family's history that began before he was born - a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam - and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation. At once a witness to the fraught yet undeniable love between a single mother and her son, it is also a brutally honest exploration of race, class, and masculinity. Asking questions central to our American moment, immersed as we are in addiction, violence, and trauma, but undergirded by compassion and tenderness, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is as much about the power of telling one's own story as it is about the obliterating silence of not being heard. With stunning urgency and grace, Ocean Vuong writes of people caught between disparate worlds, and asks how we heal and rescue one another without forsaking who we are. The question of how to survive, and how to make of it a kind of joy, powers the most important debut novel of many years.Named a Best Book of the Year by: GQ, Kirkus Reviews, Booklist, Library Journal, TIME, Esquire, The Washington Post, Apple, Good Housekeeping, The New Yorker, The New York Public Library, Elle.com, The Guardian, The A.V. Club, NPR, Lithub, Entertainment Weekly, Vogue.com, The San Francisco Chronicle, Mother Jones, Vanity Fair, The Wall Street Journal Magazine and more!

INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER: ON EARTH WE'RE BRIEFLY GORGEOUS debuted on the NYT bestseller list at #6, and has spent (at this time) the following five weeks on the list. It has also appeared on bestseller lists at the Los Angeles Times (#1!), USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, ABA IndieBound, the Sunday Times, and many others. Prior to publication it was the #1 Indie Next pick for June.RAVE REVIEWS: Critics are calling the novel "permanently stunning" (Ron Charles, Washington Post) "devastatingly beautiful" (NPR.org) "star-bright" (USA Today) and "masterly" (The New York Times Book Review).BEST OF THE YEAR: Named one of the best books of the year by Amazon, USA Today, and BookRiot, and prior to publication was amed one of the most anticipated books of 2019 by Vulture, Entertainment Weekly, Buzzfeed, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Oprah.com, Huffington Post, The A.V. Club, Nylon, The Week, The Rumpus, The Millions, The Guardian, Publishers Weekly, and more.NATIONAL TOUR DRAWING HUGE CROWDS: All of Ocean's readings have been standing room only, completely sold out events-and like nothing we've ever seen before.FANTASTIC MEDIA HITS: Profiled in the New York Times and the Guardian, interviewed on NPR's Weekend Edition, and featured on NBC's Late Night with Seth Meyers and HBO's Vice News Tonight, Ocean's star only continues to rise.FIRST-RATE SUPPORT: We have wonderful words of praise for Marlon James, Emma Straub, Tommy Orange, Celese Ng, and Michael Cunningham.AWARD-WINNING AND CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED POET: Vuong's poetry collection, NIGHT SKY WITH EXIT WOUNDS, was chosen as a New York Times Top 10 Book of 2016, a Best Book of the Year at the New York Times, New Yorker, The Guardian, NPR, Boston Globe, and more. It was the winner of the T. S. Eliot Prize, Whiting Award, Forward Prize, Thom Gunn Award, and finalist for the Lambda Literary Award, and lauded by Michiko Kakutani, Roxane Gay, and Viet Thanh Nguyen.POWERFUL CONTEMPORARY THEMES: Vuong explores themes which are central to our world and our culture today, such as immigration, otherness, and sexuality, as well as drug addiction, interfamily violence, and shared trauma.