Ocean Vuong made major waves in the literary world in 2019 with On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, an epistolary novel reflecting on loss, memory, and family; he's also an award-winning poet whose collection Night Sky With Exit Wounds won the T. S. Eliot Prize in 2017. Vuong will discuss his second poetry book, the New York Times-bestselling collection Time Is A Mother, during this visit to Portland. He'll be joined in conversation by Anis Mojgani, Oregon Poet Laureate, author of In the Pocket of Small Gods, and poetry hotline creator. Our tip: Before the event, listen to Vuong's tear-inducing March 2020 interview with journalist and podcaster Krista Tippett, in which he casually says things like "I want to take off the shoes of my voice, so that I can enter a place with care, so that I can do the work I need to," and “When the apocalypse comes, what will you put into the vessel for the future?”  by Lindsay Costello