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Each year, the Nashville Public Library Foundation honors prominent authors during Literary Gala weekend. The celebration highlights literary talent through public lectures and special events while raising crucial funds to support the Nashville Public Library's mission to inspire reading, advance learning and connect the community. This year's honoree was poet and novelist Ocean Vuong.

During the reception, donors and supporters of the foundation mingled with gala co-chairs Deborah Webster-Clair and Walter Clair, Anne Davis and Karl Dean, and Dee and Anand Patel. Ocean also visited with guests as servers passed hors d'oeuvres throughout the room.

After guests settled in, Elise Adler, Parnassus Books' director of events, reflected on her more than 35 years at the Nashville Public Library and her firsthand experience witnessing the foundation's impact on the community. Next, Brock Kidd introduced Ocean, sharing personal memories of the library and reflecting on the importance of public libraries.

“A thriving society depends on everyone having the tools to join the conversation. Our library is the one civic institution whose purpose is to give people those tools freely,” he said. “A puppet show gives a room full of strangers a common language. Extend that to every branch, every week, for a generation, and a city comes to share more than a vocabulary. It shares a set of values.”

Ocean then joined Brock onstage for a Q&A session and shared his observations after visiting the Nashville Public Library earlier that day. “I noticed the posture of the people who pass through ... you can tell by the posture of every single person in that space that they could feel the pride and the dignity that the community has bestowed on them.” He continued, “I want that for every public space in this country.”

He then turned his attention to his work with students, marveling at young writers' ability to imagine possibilities. He described the seemingly impossible task of confronting a blank page and creating something entirely new. “Take something that is limited and defined, and then complicate it so that it goes beyond what it is. It should be impossible, and yet we do it every day.”