The award is worth about VND131 million, aiming to honour the first volume of Ocean Vuong's poetry - Night Sky with Exit Wounds.
Ocean Vuong was born in 1988 in the suburbs of Saigon. His family moved to Connecticut in the US when he was two years old.
Ocean Vuong graduated from Brooklyn College with a BA in 19th-century English Literature. In 2016, Vuong received a US$50,000 Whiting Award. Earlier, he received prestigious awards such as the Stanley Kunitz Memorial for young poets in 2012 and the Pushcart Prize in 2013.
Ocean Vuong's poetry appeared on many American newspaper and magazines, such as The New York Times, Kenyon Review, The Nation, New Republic, and The New Yorker.
