Vuong is author of the acclaimed novel On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous. It was published in 2019, the same year he won a MacArthur "genius" grant. It was also the same year his mother died. "Ever since I lost her, I've felt that my life has been lived in only two days," Vuong tells Tonya Mosley. "There's the today where she is not here, and then the vast and endless yesterday where she was." Vuong has a new poetry collection called Time Is a Mother, which he describes as "a search for life in the aftershocks of death."

Also, Ken Tucker reviews the new album by Wet Leg, who he describes as indie-rock's newest obsession.