Talks & Entertainment

At this in-person event (with a virtual attendance option), masks and proof of vaccination are required including a photo ID that matches the name on the vaccination card. Please review our health and safety protocols here.

This program does not include a book signing. All books will be pre-signed by the author.

From the author of the New York Times bestselling novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous and critically-acclaimed poetry collection Night Sky With Exit Wounds, comes Time Is a Mother, a deeply intimate poetry collection that finds Ocean Vuong searching for life among the aftershocks of his mother’s death, embodying the paradox of sitting within grief while being determined to survive beyond it.

Shifting through memory, Vuong contends with personal loss, the meaning of family, and the cost of being the product of an American war in America. At once vivid, brave, and propulsive, the poems circle fragmented lives to find both restoration as well as the epicenter of the break. Bold and prescient, and a testament to tenderness in the face of violence, Time Is a Mother is a return and a forging forth all at once.

A recipient of a 2019 MacArthur “Genius” Grant, Vuong’s Night Sky With Exit Wounds was also the winner of the 2016 Whiting Award and the 2017 T. S. Eliot Prize. He will be in conversation with Kat Chow, a reporter, writer, and author of the New York Times Notable Book of 2021, Seeing Ghosts: A Memoir. Chow was a founding member of NPR’s Code Switch team and podcast.