Jack H. Skirball Center For The Performing Arts
SoHo, Manhattan · 459 reviews
The evening began inside the packed NYU Skirball auditorium, where Ocean Vuong appeared in conversation with a colleague from NYU's Creative Writing Program to celebrate the release of his new novel, The Emperor of Gladness. The crowd--students, writers, and long-time admirers of On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous--leaned forward from the first minute. Vuong was witty, sexy, and astonishingly quick. His pedagogy, as revealed through his talk, felt like an art of improvisation--how to teach language not as a rule, but as a dance between pain and play. His responses to each prompt were crisp and mischievous, layered with poetry even in casual speech. What could have been a serious literary discussion turned into a lively exchange of glances, jokes, and vulnerabilities--a performance of thinking aloud. He spoke of teaching as "an act of tenderness and rebellion," of how syntax can carry desire and survival, and of how the classroom becomes a kind of poem when everyone listens closely. The moderator matched him in rhythm, teasing out moments of humor and insight; their rapport made the night feel intimate, as if the audience had wandered into a late-night conversation rather than a staged event. After the talk, I lingered in the foyer, where portraits from the exhibition Hot Peaches--drag performers of downtown New York--lined the wall with the defiant quote: "You don't hide beautiful things in closets." It felt like the perfect echo to Vuong's words--beauty, too, must risk being seen. Later, I slipped into a nearby restaurant for a slow supper: baked lasagna bubbling in its ceramic dish, a slice of tiramisu, and a small espresso. The room was dim and tender, the kind of place where conversations turn inward. Between bites, I kept thinking of Vuong's phrase about "returning light to those still finding their own syntax." The meal became an aftertaste of the talk itself--comforting, layered, quietly luminous.
