Author Event With Ocean Vuong in Conversation With Jeff Zentner

In a recent profile in The New York Times, author Ocean Vuong revealed that he was cleaning toilets at Panera Bread for $8 an hour before he sold his first book. The 30-year-old author has come a long way. That book, a 2017 collection of poetry called Night Sky With Exit Wounds, won the T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry and the Whiting Award. The brand-new On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is Vuong’s first novel — it shares its title with one of the Night Sky poems, and takes the form of a book-length letter to the narrator’s mother, who cannot read. Vuong’s own mother, who brought him to America from Ho Chi Minh City when he was a toddler, was recently diagnosed with stage IV cancer. Vuong’s writing is filled with insightful examinations of change and beautiful, lyrical writing. Hear him speak more about his new book at Parnassus, where he’ll be joined by Nashville-based author Jeff Zentner, whose debut novel The Serpent King won several awards, and whose latest, Rayne & Delilah’s Midnite Matinee, is about two best friends who record a public-access television show about scary movies. 6:30 p.m. at Parnassus Books, 3900 Hillsboro Pike, Suite 14 LAURA HUTSON HUNTER