The novel follows May, a woman who��loses her��job��to artificial intelligence in a world where humans live alongside��humanoid robots��known as “hums.” As she struggles to support her family in a society increasingly dominated by technology, she undergoes an experimental procedure that allows her to evade surveillance and��seeks��refuge in one of the last remaining green spaces in her city.��

Judges praised��Hum��for its��timely��exploration of climate anxiety, technological disruption, and the commercialization of nature. According to the Climate Fiction Prize, the novel is “a book that deals with love, community and family in the face of ecological and technological collapse.”��The��award is presented annually to a novel that offers “imaginative and compelling responses to the climate crisis.” Now in its second year, the prize has quickly become one of the most prominent international honors for climate-focused literature.��

Phillips, who teaches creative writing in��the��Department of English, is the author of several celebrated books, including��The Beautiful Bureaucrat,��The Need, and��Some Possible Solutions. Her work has been widely recognized for its inventive blend of speculative fiction, literary storytelling, and sharp social observation. Phillips earned her M.F.A.��from ���ճԹ� and now serves as a��full��professor, mentoring emerging writers while continuing an internationally acclaimed literary career.��

The Climate Fiction Prize judges selected��Hum��from a shortlist of six novels that examined the climate crisis through a range of literary approaches. In awarding the prize, the judges highlighted the novel’s ability to connect environmental concerns with questions of technology, privilege, family, and human resilience.��

The post Professor Helen Phillips Wins U.K.’s 2026 Climate Fiction Prize for “Hum” appeared first on ���ճԹ�.

Routledge has published , the first comprehensive academic study devoted to Lerner’s work. Co-edited by scholars Yannicke Chupin and Karim Daanoune, the volume brings together 14 essays by international critics and researchers examining Lerner’s contributions to contemporary literature, poetry, fiction, criticism, and artistic collaboration. The collection also includes an unpublished piece by Lerner, titled Erring Together.

A celebrated novelist, poet, essayist, and professor in the Department of English, Lerner has built a career exploring and challenging the boundaries between literary forms. The new volume argues that his work consistently crosses and redefines the lines between poetry and prose, narrative and criticism, and literature and other artistic media. According to the publisher, the book is the first study to situate Lerner’s writing within the broader field of contemporary intermedial and cross-genre literature.

The publication marks a notable milestone in Lerner’s career. Authors are accustomed to filling pages with words; few reach the point where hundreds of pages are devoted to understanding, analyzing, and debating those words. In a fitting twist for a writer whose work often reflects on authorship itself, Lerner now finds himself on the other side of the sentence.

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Lee is a��theater maker, educator, screenwriter and community steward based in ���ճԹ�. Lee’s plays are often an urge to honor their mother’s broken English, to translate experiences despite the gulf of cultures, to know their own psychic blood and guts, and to give up on words entirely and commune through epic imagery and ritual.

Lee is a recipient of the Creative Capital Award for��DADBOT��(2026), the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize Finalist and Special

Haruna Lee (Photo: Heather Sten for The New York Times)

Commendation for��49 Days��(2025), the Steinberg Playwright Award (2021), and the Obie Award for Playwriting and Conception for��Suicide Forest��(2019).��For TV, Lee has written for Apple TV+’s��Pachinko��and HBO Max’s��The Flight Attendant��and has developed multiple projects across television, film, and podcast.��Lee’s writing has been published by Broadway Licensing, Yale’s��Theater��Magazine, Table Work Press, and 53rd State Press.��Lee helmed the ���ճԹ� M.F.A. Playwriting program between 2021 and 2023 and is currently teaching at Hunter College (CUNY) and Yale University.

Lee is in the early stages of the project DADBOT, a hybrid technology-performance piece where Lee’s deceased dad will be resurrected by using conversational AI to simulate the iconic father-child conversation.��The performance will be a mix of scripted and nonscripted improvisation between Lee and the AI that will feel a lot like a low-budget talk show where Lee receives the proverbial “fatherly advice.”��At the heart of this piece is Lee’s yearning to understand the ties between fatherhood, rebelliousness, and romantic love. The ���ճԹ� alumna hopes to capture a spiritual levity in “raising the dead” while interrogating AI’s application in grief work.

Rosenfeld��is a composer and artist based in New York. Her works have been presented by institutions including the Park Avenue

Marina Rosenfeld (Photo: Veronique Kolber)

Armory, the Museum of Modern Art, The Kitchen, the Serralves Foundation, and Portikus Frankfurt; festivals including Wien Modern, Donaueschinger Musiktage, Ultima, and the Holland Festival; and the Whitney, Montreal, PERFORMA, Son, and Gwangju biennials, among many others. She was awarded the Alpert Award in Visual Art in 2024.

Her project “Nulls” is hybrid in nature, linking work with generative sound and recorded media. It deals with research into the sonic and sculptural aftereffects of sound inscription. Thrilled to receive the honor, Rosenfeld��added she will use the fellowship as an open-ended time period for research and production.

Karen B. Stern Gabbay

Stern is a respected scholar, educator, and award-winning author who has earned widespread recognition for her interdisciplinary work bridging history, material culture, and religious studies. She is author of Inscribing Devotion and Death: Archaeological Evidence for Jewish Populations of North Africa (Brill 2007) and Writing on the Wall: Graffiti and the Forgotten Jews of Antiquity (Princeton University Press 2018; 2020); winner of a 2020 Jordan Schnitzer Book Award; and co-editor of With the Loyal You Show Yourself Loyal (SBL Press, 2021). Her current book project considers Jewish history through the senses.

Her Guggenheim Fellowship on the topic of “Sanctity: An Archaeology of the Senses in the Ancient Synagogue” will support ongoing field and scientific research overseas, which aims to transform understandings of Jewish history through new interpretations of ancient objects and inscriptions associated with archaeological remains of synagogues, further solidifying her reputation as a leading voice in her field.

Thien has taught literature and fiction in Canada, Hong Kong, Germany, Nigeria, the United States, Zimbabwe, and Singapore. From 2018 to 2024, she was a full professor of English at ���ճԹ�, teaching primarily in the M.F.A. Program in Fiction.

Madeleine Thien

Over the past 25 years, she has written about music, neurology, mathematics, physics, and philosophy, and about totalitarianism, protest, survival, and mourning. Her five books include the Booker-shortlisted novel Do Not Say We Have Nothing (Norton, 2016) and The Book of Records (2025), in which a girl and her father live in a building where different centuries wash in like the sea. She has been shortlisted for The Women’s Prize for Fiction, The Folio Prize, The Climate Fiction Prize, The Tadeusz Bradecki Prize, and longlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction and a Carnegie Medal. She is a recipient of the Governor-General’s Literary Award for Fiction, The Writers Trust of Canada Engel-Findley Award, and an Arts and Letters Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Her current project, A Kind of Beginning, follows two sisters who leave Hong Kong and whose lives diverge. The novel is partly about the incandescence��of talent, how brightly it can burn, and how its light dims and transforms. Thien continues to teach as an adjunct professor and remains deeply connected to ���ճԹ�’s English Department and its students.

The post ���ճԹ� Faculty, Alum Named 2026 Guggenheim Fellows appeared first on ���ճԹ�.

Yearwood’s appointment comes at a time of continued impact for the organization, which has long been a leader in connecting graduates with the college and with one another. Through reunions, regional gatherings, mentorship initiatives, and volunteer‑driven programs, the BCAA works to strengthen relationships across generations of alumni.

“Alumni are vital to advancing ���ճԹ�’s mission,” says ���ճԹ� President Michelle J. Anderson. “Their achievements strengthen our reputation, their mentorship supports student success, and their service helps move our strategic goals forward. Leaders like Trina exemplify how alumni extend the College’s values and impact well beyond campus.”

Yearwood describes her vision for the BCAA as both forward‑looking and deeply rooted in the association’s legacy. “My platform is ‘���ճԹ�, Always.’ That means centering the BCAA’s purpose with the college’s strategic priorities,” she says. She added that “���ճԹ�, Always.” echoes the school’s watchword All In and the alumni community’s role in extending ���ճԹ�’s values beyond graduation.

Anthony Castellanos ’85, chair of the ���ճԹ� Foundation Board of Trustees, adds: “Trina Yearwood’s leadership reflects the very best of our alumni community. Throughout my career, I have seen how powerful alumni involvement can be in shaping the lives of our students. Her vision and dedication will help ensure that our graduates continue to lift one another up and expand what is possible for our community.”

A ���ճԹ� graduate with bachelor’s degrees in English and Africana Studies, she earned an M.Ed. from Cambridge College, an Ed.D. in educational leadership and higher education administration from West Virginia University, and a certificate in Diversity and Inclusion from Cornell University. An educator and administrator, she has served as an adjunct assistant professor at ���ճԹ� since 2011, directed the Teacher Opportunity Corps II, and held associate dean roles at Long Island University and Queens College. She is also the founder of TREAT—Teachers Ready to Educate, Advocate, and Transform—and has served as an advisory member for the Center for SDG Global Education (formerly the UNESCO Center for Global Education’s Advisory Support Council) since 2018.

As she looks ahead, Yearwood returns to the message that continues to guide her leadership.

“It’s the spirit of community, persistence, and discovery—the spirit of ���ճԹ�. The BCAA is a continuum of that spirit. It’s how we carry those values into our workplaces, how we lead, how we show up for our communities, and ultimately how we show up for our students. ‘���ճԹ�, Always.’ is a reminder of our stewardship and what we commit to as members of the BCAA board.”

The post Trina Yearwood ’00 Is New President of the ���ճԹ� Alumni Association appeared first on ���ճԹ�.

Having just completed her coursework in December, Plush reflects on her journey back to higher education and the unexpected moments that made it possible.

You first came to ���ճԹ� in 1999. What brought you here originally?
I was born and raised in ���ճԹ� and graduated from South Shore High School. Coming to ���ճԹ� felt like the natural next step. I was a psychology major, and for a while I was doing pretty well. I remember one class in particular, Psych Statistics, just stopped me in my tracks. I tried it multiple times and couldn’t get past it. Also, life started happening. Responsibilities piled up, and I stepped away from school.

What happened after you stepped away?
I moved to New Jersey, got married, and had two children. I built a career as the director of a preschool and was doing well professionally. At that point, going back to school didn’t feel urgent. I was working, raising a family, and managing everything that comes with adult life. College felt like something I had already tried—and moved on from.

But things changed. What was the turning point?
It started with a medical issue. I had a severe toothache, needed a root canal, and developed a dry socket afterward. The pain was intense, and I was prescribed opioid medication. I was hooked before I even realized it. That period led to a cascade of problems—family tension, separation from my husband, and eventually losing my job when the preschool I worked at closed due to the casino shutdowns in Atlantic City.

How did you end up back in New York?
I needed a fresh start. I didn’t have a car anymore, I wasn’t working, and things in New Jersey had completely fallen apart. I came back to New York thinking I could rebuild. I thought I would stay with a cousin, and when that didn’t work out, I found myself homeless.

What was that experience like?
From 2017 to 2020, I lived on the streets of Manhattan, sleeping near 30th Street and Park Avenue. Not in shelters—on the sidewalk. It was an incredibly hard time. I was in an abusive relationship, cut off from my family, and just trying to survive day to day.

What changed your trajectory?
During the early days of the pandemic, a woman and her husband started coming around, handing out money to people on the street. She stopped to talk to me—and kept coming back. Her name is Traci. She was a retired patent attorney and had started the College Education Milestone Foundation, in memory of her father. She got to know me and said I seemed more like the type to be doing The New York Times crossword puzzle. She told me I wasn’t what she expected. She didn’t just see a homeless person, she saw me.

How did education reenter the picture?
Once I was able to secure housing and leave an abusive situation, Traci asked if I’d ever consider going back to school. At first, it wasn’t even on my radar. Instead, we started by writing a book together about homelessness during the pandemic. That book, , ended up on The Wall Street Journal bestseller list. Writing came naturally to me. I’ve always been strong in English—my mother was an English teacher—and that project reminded me of what I was capable of.

Is that what led you back to ���ճԹ�?
Yes. Traci encouraged me to take a writing class, just to see how it felt. I breezed through it. That’s when I thought, maybe I can do this. With Traci’s support, I reapplied to ���ճԹ� and was accepted in spring 2022.

What was it like returning as an older student?
Intimidating at first. I was clearly older than everyone else, sitting there with a notebook and pen while other students had tablets and fancy tech. But once I put my head down and focused on the work, it stopped mattering. Online classes helped a lot, too. They made it possible to balance everything without feeling so out of place.

Who supported you along the way at ���ճԹ�?
So many people. Gina Priolo [an associate director in the college’s Student Success Unit], Professor Roni Natov, [Associate] Professor Martha Nadell, and the late Professor Carey Harrison were all instrumental. They worked with me to retain as many credits as possible from my earlier years and helped me map out a realistic path to graduation. Professor Harrison, especially, really reignited my love for learning.

Where are you now—and what’s next?
I have another book just released called . It picks up where my first book ends—going back to school, caring for my father before he passed, and rebuilding my life.

I don’t know exactly what I’ll do next, but I know it will involve writing, editing, or publishing.

What would you say to other adults considering a return to college?
I’m 44 years old. It’s never too late to start again. You might be surprised by how flexible and supportive the process can be. If I can come back after everything I’ve been through, it’s doable for a lot of people out there who think it isn’t.

The post A Long Road Back appeared first on ���ճԹ�.

Burgess is widely known for his contributions to children’s literature, poetry, and education, and has long championed creativity, literacy, and the power of storytelling, inspiring students both in and out of the classroom. This award places Burgess among an elite group of writers whose work has made a lasting impact on children’s literature.

Published by Clarion Books, Fireworks follows two siblings on a steamy summer day in the city, capturing the anticipation and joy of fireworks with immersive, sensory art.��It was selected for its exceptional artistic quality, imaginative storytelling, and ability to capture the wonder and emotional resonance of its subject for young readers.

Other notable recognitions for Fireworks include:

• Society of Illustrators Gold Medal
• New York Times/New York Public Library Best Illustrated Book
• Kirkus’ Best Books of 2025
• School Library Journal’s Best Books of 2025
• Publisher’s Weekly Best Picture Books of 2025
• Blue Ribbon Award 2025
• 2026 Charlotte Zolotow Honor for Outstanding Writing in Picture Books

Burgess, who has been teaching at ���ճԹ� since 1999, is a noted expert in a wide range of fields, including poetry, creative writing, and children’s literature, as well as education and pedagogy.

He is the author of one poetry collection and 16 books for children, including Words With Wings and Magic Things, The Bear and the Moon, Drawing on Walls: A Story of Keith Haring, As Edward Imagined: A Story of Edward Gorey in Three Acts, and Sylvester’s Letter. Burgess also edited two book-length collections: Spellbound: The Art of Teaching Poetry and Dream Closet: Meditations on Childhood Space.

The post Professor Matthew Burgess Book Fireworks Awarded 2026 Randolph Caldecott Medal appeared first on ���ճԹ�.

Tell us about your background.

I was born and raised in Chicago and its surrounding suburbs. My family owns and operates a church on the South Side of the city (my grandfather is the bishop, my mother the pastor). I flew the nest, dropped out of school, and moved to New York when I was 19 years old. Now I find myself here at ���ճԹ�, finishing the degree I started over 10 years ago at Illinois State University. I initially moved to the city to pursue acting and theater, but other avenues opened up to me. I found myself working as a storyteller and producer, and I’ve been blessed to work across the industry, telling stories in multiple mediums—from short and longform videos on the internet at places like VICE and BuzzFeed to documentaries for companies like HBO and Hulu. But I’m eager to get back to my first love: theater.

Why did you choose ���ճԹ�?

Honestly, proximity was my initial attraction. I live in Bed-Stuy, and it’s nothing for me to just hop on the B44 and jet to campus. The more I spoke to people about the school—everyone raved about its English Department, primarily creative writing. That paired with what I’ve come to learn about the Theater Department, made the choice a practical one.

Why did you choose the creative writing program and what do you like most about it?

Before anything, I am a writer, a poet. Words and the bending of language are things I’ve been doing before I even knew what I was doing. The core of everything I love and everything I’m good at lives on the foundation of my curiosity about words, language, and text. This was my entry point into theater. It’s what made it possible for me to explore documentaries and filmmaking. The key to conveying anything is the ability to tell a story, to harness language to do your will. All those years ago, during my first attempt to obtain a degree, I majored in theater—acting. This time around, it made more sense to pursue creative writing (playwriting), with a minor in acting.

Have you completed any internships, or received any grants, stipends, or scholarships from ���ճԹ�?

Most recently, I was selected for the Mellon Undergraduate Transfer Student Research Program, where I am developing a project on the intersections of performance, memoir, and poetry under the mentorship of Professor Rosamond S. King. The English Department awarded me the Louis Goodman Creative Writing Scholarship [overseen by the ���ճԹ� Foundation] for an outstanding creative writing submission. I was a a paid program that places CUNY in arts and cultural institutions in New York City. Through that program I was paired with the . I was a , serving as a dramaturg for the Public Playwrights residency.��I was a Magner Career Center stipend winner; this funded a documentary project and work with an emerging New York City production company. I was chosen by to be a student ambassador connecting CUNY students with accessible, affordable theater experiences.

How do you envision your first year after graduating?

I would love to be workshopping and developing new works in and around the city, maybe even getting out of New York City, squatting elsewhere, and writing a play. I’m open.

If you had to convince another student like you to go to college here, what would you say?

The world runs on the backs of public school students. New York City shines because of public school students. It can pay to go to a public school. I would encourage anyone looking to further their education to look at what is available to them in their immediate communities and backyards. Enrichment is so accessible; all you have to do is reach for it.

Do you have any advice for your fellow students?

Two things. Take full advantage of the resources and facilities around you. Access such as this exists in very few places outside of academia or in our city. While they are available to you, not only use them, but maximize your use of them so that what you do or where you go next, you’re fully prepared because of the work you’ve already done and the connections you made.

And two: There’s sooo much “free” money on this campus—from fellowships, stipends, endowments, etc. Deadlines are scary, but get on them. The only shots you miss are the ones you don’t take. If you don’t get it the first time, apply again, and again, and again. Someone is reading those applications; they are seeing your name. Some things may not come around immediately, maybe not even the third time, but you’d be shocked to learn that in many cases what you do now is setting you up for the sixth thing, the seventh. Get yourself out there.

The post Harnessing Language appeared first on ���ճԹ�.

English Department Chair Martha Nadell at a recent convening about AI.

Science fiction has long imagined artificial intelligence, but few could predict the scale and speed of its real-world impact. Today, AI is reshaping every sector, sparking both excitement and unease.

At ���ճԹ�, faculty and staff are navigating this transformation in real time. We spoke with three faculty experts—Martha Nadell (English), MJ Robinson (Television, and Radio & Emerging Media), and Karen Stern-Gabbay (History, Roberta S. Matthews Center for Teaching and Learning)—who shared how the college is responding.

Here, they discuss AI’s influence on classroom learning and how both learners and educators are preparing for an AI-driven future. ��Responses have been edited for clarity.

What was the initial reaction to AI by your colleagues?  

Martha Nadell: Late in 2022, when ChatGPT first made headlines, academia seemed to lose its collective mind; the Great AI Panic of 2023 was about to begin. Some of my colleagues immediately went apocalyptic, imagining a world in which AI took over. A few were ready to have AI integrated, somehow, into their brains. But others stuck their heads in the sand and pretended it didn’t exist.

How have you seen AI take shape in the classroom?  

Nadell: Early on, it was very easy to spot generative AI-produced work. ChatGPT was producing solidly mediocre work, C+ at best. The problems were obvious: deeply conventional language, workaday structures, and unoriginal thought. Some students were offloading their cognitive work to a pattern-matching machine, which could produce prose that possessed an air of authority, if only you didn’t read too closely.

MJ Robinson:  As a journalism professor, I teach, per Phil Graham, that journalism is the first rough draft of history. So, in one respect, the students I teach are writing the history of AI—in culture, society and their anticipated industry and practice but—and here’s the difference: that technology can also be writing it with, or prompted by, them. So that’s an interesting conundrum.

I started including AI modules in my Journalism Capstone course in Spring 2023.  From the beginning we were examining how journalism was covering the release of ChatGPT to the general public as well as interrogating how it was affecting the journalism industry itself and considering how these text-generating technologies will affect the future of journalism as an industry and a public good.

How should a college education prepare students for this new world?  

Karen Stern-Gabbay: It is unclear what sorts of preparation students have for working with AI (agentive and otherwise) when they enter college. Colleges today, therefore, play a critical role in establishing expectations and setting rules for the game. We are uniquely positioned to encourage students to interrogate their assumptions about authorship and intellectual property, and to reinforce how essential it is to develop human skills (related to critical thinking, emotional intelligence, analog skills, etc.). College students have opportunities to practice responsible AI use inside classroom settings before these skills in the workplace.

Nadell: Universities are where critical thinking happens, and where students can recognize the limits of what AI is good at–predicting the likelihood of common and formulaic arrangements of language and thought—and can think through ethical quandaries with empathy.

How important is it to develop AI literacy among educators?

Robinson: We will, shortly, be in a world where K-12 educators have been educated in the age of AI and teaching children with these technologies from a very early age. That’s going to make critical AI literacy even more important. Asking questions about why one is using generative AI for a particular task prior to using it, insisting upon human-in-the-loop processes, knowing what one does not know about these platforms—these are key.

What have you and your colleagues been doing to enhance the understanding of AI on campus? 

Stern-Gabbay: At the Roberta S. Matthews Center for Teaching and Learning we have hosted events and workshops during the past year that particularly engage with the complex roles of AI in the classroom. Of course, academic integrity and data privacy appear to be the biggest issues that we have explored, but several of our faculty (rightly) point out the environmental impact of big data associated with AI.

I do think, however, that discussions of AI in the classroom bring into starker relief topics that we should be discussing anyway, including the reasons why college classrooms have become more invaluable than ever—that is, to engage in and strengthen students’ critical thinking skills—these are invaluable in an increasingly automated and AI driven world.

The post Education in the Age of AI appeared first on ���ճԹ�.

The 32nd Annual Faculty and Staff Authors Reception, held in the Christoph M. Kimmich Reading Room, shone a spotlight on more than 30 individuals whose recent works—including scholarly books, novels, monographs, poetry, and other creative artistic pieces—offer fresh insight into our world and deepen our collective imagination.

The 32nd Annual Faculty and Staff Authors Reception shone a spotlight on scholarly books, novels, monographs, poetry, and other creative artistic pieces by faculty and staff.

The talent came from the schools of Visual, Media, and Performing Arts; Education; Humanities and Social Sciences; and Natural and Behavioral Sciences, the Department of Classics, as well as the Division of Institutional Advancement. The works ranged from CUNY Presidential Professor of Art Archie Rand’s artistic work in Popeye, Unchained and Archie Rand: Oz, to Associate Professor of Education Yoon-Joo Lee’s fascinating and personal book, Stories on Disability Through Our Voices: Born This Way.

President Michelle J. Anderson praised the honorees, acknowledging the dedication behind every publication—the late nights, countless revisions, and the unshakable passion for their craft—and describing the event as a way for the college to say: We see your work, we value it, and we are incredibly proud.

Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs Bedford echoed that sentiment, expressing gratitude for the honorees’ scholarship and creativity. She reminded everyone of the privilege and responsibility of being part of a community of ideas—a place that champions lifelong learning and intellectual growth.

Lucas Rubin, the College’s Assistant Dean for Academics and director of the CUNY Latin/Greek Institute, had his book The Latin/Greek Institute at the City University of New York on display.

“I especially enjoyed seeing the depth and breadth of material, which spanned the scholarly to the creative, with works intended for audiences of all ages,” Rubin said. “I was particularly delighted to take part this year, as the first chapter of my book is a retrospective of ���ճԹ�’s Department of Classics, which has had a remarkable and storied history, especially in its outsized contributions to language pedagogy.”

First held in 1993, the event was thoughtfully organized and hosted by Mary Mallery, chief librarian and director of Academic IT, with key support from Judith Wild, associate librarian for acquisitions, cataloging, serials, and interlibrary loans. Together, they welcomed the extended ���ճԹ� family, including President Michelle J. Anderson, Provost April Bedford, Associate Dean for Faculty and Administration James T. Eaton, and many others.

The full list of authors and their contributions is available .

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Photo Credit: Peter Bienkowski

When he was two, Ocean Vuong ’12 landed in Connecticut with his family, refugees from Vietnam. Considering himself his family’s “one chance” at moving up the socioeconomic ladder, he found his way to ���ճԹ�, where he graduated with a B.A. in English with a focus on 19th century American literature.

Vuong went on to write the bestselling novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous (Penguin Press, 2019) and two books of poetry, Night Sky With Exit Wounds (Copper Canyon Press, 2019) and Time Is a Mother (Penguin Press, 2022).

Currently on hiatus from writing as he awaits the publication of his second novel, The Emperor of Gladness (Penguin Press, 2025), the MacArthur “genius” fellow has been focusing on photography and his first show at the Toledo Museum of Art. We caught up with him to talk about his journey from Saigon and his life as an artist.

How was your family’s experience moving to the United States?

I was two when I came over and, interestingly enough, my first memory of America—and it became a very quintessential American memory—was eating KFC. That was because the church that sponsored us gave us a stack of KFC coupons, which my family immediately called Old Man Chicken because of the picture of Colonel Sanders on the coupons. None of us could read English.

It was unfathomable how good it was to us. We were coming out of postwar Vietnam at a time when folks were cutting their rice rations with sawdust. I remember my grandmother and my mother coming home with these buckets of chicken, and we felt like we made it.

Your family started out life in the U.S. in New England?

Hartford, Connecticut. We were surrounded by Jamaican, Haitian, and Dominican immigrants whose families had worked the fields in New England after World War II, so it was already a place of deep, rich immigration. It was not so strange to us, and we were not received as strangers. We had no TV or radio, so I did not know America was mostly white until I was 11, 12 years old. Not until I finally made it to a mall and the suburbs. Nowadays immigrants can go to YouTube to get some sense of the world.

The community embraced us, they saw us. At the heart of this was a legacy of endurance and success from Black and Brown immigrant communities coming through the Great Migration, settling in Hartford, and working in those fields.

We were war refugees. Many of us never aspired to be doctors, lawyers, or businesspeople, even in the old country. We were farmers, and we would be farmers forever, and that was fine. We’ve been doing that for a thousand years. When we came to America, there was none of that aspiration. And so we received everything in that community as a bonus. I’m grateful for that.

What prompted you to come to New York?

I think the larger answer might be queerness. I didn’t know what New York was, but I had to try it. And so it was kind of like this North Star. I went to New York to go to business school. There was no pressure from my family. I didn’t have to overcome immigrant family expectations, but I ended up putting pressure on myself. I was lucky to have folks who said, “Go do whatever you want. If you fail, there’s a seat right next to me at the nail salon.” And even McDonald’s. My mom said, “You can be a manager at McDonald’s. That’s a salary, right?”

But the pressure is there for anyone who is awake in America. You look around and say, okay, my people tell me I can do whatever I want, but I see them struggling, and I know that I’m their way out. I’m the foot forward. So I’ve got to put that foot in the right place, in the most practical place.

I thought maybe marketing. Marketing is art, and I can look at art. It’s communication. I had this desire to communicate. I didn’t yet know I wanted to be a poet, but I had this desire to communicate. I went to Pace University to study business and marketing. But I couldn’t do it. I was surrounded by people in suits, and when they went off to internships at Goldman Sachs and Chase Bank, I felt like a fraud. Who was I kidding?

So I walked out one late October afternoon. You could see the ���ճԹ� Bridge from Pace Library. And I looked at that bridge and remembered poems I had read by Hart Crane and Walt Whitman, “To ���ճԹ� Bridge” and “Crossing ���ճԹ� Ferry.” And I thought, okay, let me walk across that bridge and decide. I walked across and said, “That’s it. I’m not going to go back.” I never went back.

Photo Credit: © John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation–used with permission.

What happened next?

I was too ashamed to go home and tell my mom I failed. So I bummed around. I lost my housing, so I stayed on friends’ couches. I went to open mics. I told myself that if I was going to be here, I might as well follow in the footsteps of my heroes, Allen Ginsburg, James Baldwin, and Amira Baraka, and stay in the East Village and see what happens.

One day, I realized I had to go home. I was running out of money, but I couldn’t go home empty-handed. I was the only one. My family had one die to cast, not even two dice, just one—me. A friend suggested I try CUNY; I was still considered a resident and could get in-state tuition. So I enrolled in ���ճԹ� and earned a B.A. in English. I told my mom I was earning a business degree.

Could you talk about your experience in the English department? Who were your mentors?

The B.A. was great in that I got the core curriculum, which people bemoan and ask things like, “Why am I here studying rocks when I’m a biochemistry major?” I asked the same thing for about five minutes, and then my mind started opening. I’m telling you, to this day, I still use stratified rock as a metaphor for history and time and literary traditions. When I teach, I say, “Look, it’s like stratified rock. We are the top. We’re the grass, and the grass is the thinnest part. And it’s the briefest part. So while we’re alive, we have to do what we can. The dead have spoken, and they are the stratified rock there.” And that came from Geology 101, core curriculum, ���ճԹ�.

My professors and mentors were Ronnie Natov, Geri DeLuca [professor emerita], and Ben Lerner. At the time, I didn’t have a sense that Vietnamese American life and Vietnamese history were viable for poetry. My teachers at ���ճԹ� said, “If you don’t do it, who will?”

I didn’t understand that at first. So they gave me Isaac Bashevis Singer and they gave me Toni Morrison. They said, “Look at Morrison’s Beloved; she’s writing about the first generation coming out of slavery. I was able to see the parallel. My mother is similar in how she witnessed the war, and now she’s on the other side of it. So if Morrison can go back 150 years and salvage a story, here I am living in the first generation of it; I need to write this down.

Your work speaks directly to your life as a Vietnamese refugee in America and a gay man.

Everything I write comes through this body and how this body is perceived in the world. And so that’s categorical, but it’s also specific. It’s this body and it’s an Asian body. But I can’t start the day seeing myself as a category determined by media or cultural abstractions. I have to start as Ocean. And Ocean moves through all of this.

You are taking a break from writing and reacquainting yourself with photography.

Yes. Photography is not new for me; I began shooting some years ago, photos of my friend’s band. But what got me exploring other subjects is that when I was 19, I published my first poem in the Connecticut Poetry Society’s journal. It was a small thing. And I had won this little award at that time. It might as well have been the Pulitzer—you’re 19, you win a poetry prize. I remember getting the prize and the issue in the mail, and I biked to my mother’s nail salon. I couldn’t wait to tell her that I was legitimate, that I didn’t waste my life on this weird thing that I’d been doing that nobody understands. And I got to her nail salon and showed it to her. The first thing she said was, “Well, how come it’s only one page?” There’s nothing like a mother to bring you right back down to earth. And being illiterate, the next thing she said was, “I can’t read it.”

After that incident with my mother, I wanted to start shooting photographs of my family. I wanted to show my mother my vision of the world and how I saw all of us. So I’ve been taking these little documentary photos ever since. When I showed them to her, she said something that kind of haunts me to this day, and colors my understanding of my work. I showed her the photos, and she looked through them and she said, “Wow, our life is so sad.”

As soon as she said that, that’s exactly what I saw. And it’s interesting that in Vietnamese, the word sad is buồn. But it doesn’t just mean sad. There’s an undercurrent. It has a more capacious definition that includes a type of wistful, melancholic beauty. You can say, “I am buồn,” and you just said you’re sad. But if you go look at a sunset—you stop your car, go out, and seek it out—you can also say buồn. So it applies to this kind of fleeting lost somberness, which made a lot of sense with what I was taking.

And I started to see that in all of my work, my novels later on, in my poems, which are laced with this kind of sadness. It was a private practice. Only very recently, my friends, many of whom are photographers, started to see my images. And they told me that I needed to start sharing them or it would be a waste. So I began to commit to it, and it’s been a lovely, lovely relationship.

With writing you have to be exact, and there’s no luck. Sontag said it best—there’s no luck in writing. I’ve never accidentally written a good sentence. You wrangle away and it’s painstaking. But you can accidentally take a good photo.

You are a poet, novelist, photographer, and as importantly, an educator. What do you see as today’s generation of students’ greatest strengths?

They’re so good at expressing their needs. I admit my generation was a bit “it is what it is. Take it or leave it. Do what you can.” But they have this kind of spirit that says, “No, we are going to get what we want.”

This new sense of self-determination has come from the efforts of LGBTQ activism, which has made space for queer folks to be more normalized in fighting for our rights, and I’m really proud to see my young students not only make space for queer voices, but for queer students to lead discussions, movements, and to center the cultural conversation around themselves and their needs with poise, determination, and pride.

And I think we’re seeing a lot of that in the political discourse as well. Their demands are heard. The students who I educate, educate me as much as I do any of them.

Is there anything else you’d like to share?

I want to thank the ���ճԹ� Department of English for getting me an emergency grant in 2009, when I lost my housing and was one semester away from graduating.

My housing situation blew up and I was out on the street, and I don’t know how they did it but they bailed me out. The Department of English advocated to help me. I wrote them a note that I had to go back to Hartford and they said, “No, no, no. We’re not going to let you leave. We’re going to figure this out the one last semester.” Then they came back with the funds. I don’t know what would have happened without that.

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