Author and poet Ocean Vuong kicks off our first full day of Winter Institute with the breakfast keynote, Alternative Truths: the bookstore and library as sites of counter knowledge, play, inquiry, and freedom. Ocean Vuong’s personal experiences — as a writer and educator from the working poor, and as a professor for over 10 years in both private and public universities — give him a unique perspective on the role of independent bookstores and public libraries. How do they provide an accessible and affordable alternative to private and state-funded institutional knowledge, and how can they become antidotes to bastions of power and prestige? Vuong will explore how smaller, community-based reading ecosystems support freedom and learning.