Prize-winning American poet and writer Ocean Vuong has been awarded one of this year's prestigious MacArthur Fellowship grants - worth a whopping $625,000.
The so-called “genius grant” is awarded to seven different writers each year by the American MacArthur Foundation, allowing them to “continue to innovate, take risks, and pursue their vision”.
According to The Guardian, The MacArthur Foundation described Vuong as a “vital new literary voice demonstrating mastery of multiple poetic registers while addressing the effects of intergenerational trauma, the refugee experience, and the complexities of identity and desire."
Vuong, whose debut collection of poetry, Night Sky With Exit Wounds, won critical acclaim, traveled to the US with his family aged two as a refugee from Vietnam - having spent a year in a refugee camp in the Philippines.
Vuong recently released his first novel, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous - structured as a letter to a mother who cannot read English.
"I grew up surrounded by Vietnamese refugee women who used stories to create portals,” Vuong said of the book, The Guardian reports.
“I use language and literature as a way to orchestrate a framework to think and inquire about American life, including the legacy of American violence.”
Describing his writing, Vuong said he wanted to centre the experiences of Vietnamese refugees.
”It was a way of taking Vietnamese refugees who are often existing on the margins and putting them in the center to have the dignity and power of literature with a capital 'L'." he said.
Vuong has previously said he resisted labels on his identity and work.
“Because of the precarious nature of my own history I don’t like to be confined to any genre, given any label,” he said.
“Ultimately, we’re all just writing sentences and telling stories.”
