You're about to listen to a BBC podcast, but this is about something else you might enjoy.

My name's Katie Lecky and I'm an assistant commissioner for on demand music on BBC Sounds.

The BBC has an incredible musical heritage and culture and as a music lover, I love being part of that.

With music on sounds, we offer collections and mixes for everything, from workouts to

helping you nod off, boogie in your kitchen, or even just a moment of calm. And they're all put

together by people who know their stuff. So if you want some expertly curated music in your life,

check out BBC Sounds.

BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts.

Art that defies convention is the order of the day on Open Book this week,

with two stories inspired by the interwar design revolutionaries of the Bauhaus.

And we have a literary postcard from Sudan.

But we begin with the much-lawed debut work of fiction by the T.S. Eliot Prize-winning poet Ocean Vuong,

blurring boundaries between essay, journalism, memoir and fiction on earth where briefly gorgeous takes the form of a letter from a writer we know as little dog to his mother,

a Vietnamese immigrant and survivor of the Vietnam War who can't read.

Ocean Vuong joins me now. Welcome.

Thank you, Maryle. Glad to be here.

Your award-winning poetry collection, Night Sky with Exit Wounds, tackled similar territory to this novel, your family

biography, the aftermath of war, the experience of being an immigrant in America. So what made you

want to turn to novel form to explore those experiences further? Yeah, I love poetry, but I'm afraid

it allowed me to get off the hook.

I got really good at sneaking out of the poem.

As soon as the heat got too hot in the kitchen, I turned off the stove and left.

...