Do you love to read? So do we! Join us for the NEPM Book Club — a quarterly virtual meet-up dedicated to bringing readers together to chat about new, diverse and interesting fiction.
Our next meeting will be Thursday, April 30 at 7 p.m. We'll be reading "The Emperor of Gladness" by Ocean Vuong, who will be joining us for a Q&A!
ABOUT THE NOVEL
One late summer evening in a post-industrial Connecticut town, 19-year-old Hai stands on the edge of a bridge in pelting rain, ready to jump, when he hears someone shout across the river. The voice belongs to Grazina, an elderly widow succumbing to dementia, who convinces him to take another path. Bereft and out of options, he quickly becomes her caretaker. Over the course of the year, the unlikely pair develops a life-altering bond, one built on empathy, spiritual reckoning, and heartbreak, with the power to alter Hai’s relationship to himself, his family, and a community at the brink.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ocean Vuong's first novel, "On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous" was the winner of the American Book Award, the Mark Twain Award, and the New England Book Award. A nominee for the National Book Award and a recipient of a MacArthur "Genius" Grant, he is also the author of the poetry collections, "Time is a Mother," a finalist for the Griffin prize, and "Night Sky with Exit Wounds," a New York Times Top 10 Book, winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize, the Whiting Award, the Thom Gunn Award.
Born in Saigon, Vietnam, and raised in Hartford, Connecticut, in a working class family of nail salon and factory laborers, he was educated at nearby Manchester Community College before transferring to Pace University and then enrolling at Brooklyn College, where he graduated with a BA in American literature. He subsequently received his MFA in poetry from NYU.
He currently splits his time between western Mass. and New York City, where he teaches in the MFA program at NYU.
Learn more about the NEPM Book Club at nepm.org/bookclub.