Writer (born 1970)
Kevin Young (born November 8, 1970)
[1]
[2] is an American
poet and the director of the Smithsonian Institution
National Museum of African American History and Culture since 2021. Author of 11 books and editor of eight others,
[3] Young previously served as Director of the
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the
New York Public Library . A winner of a
Guggenheim Fellowship as well as a finalist for the
National Book Award for his 2003 collection
Jelly Roll: A Blues , Young was Atticus Haygood Professor of English and Creative Writing at
Emory University and curator of Emory's
Raymond Danowski Poetry Library . In March 2017, Young was named poetry editor of
The New Yorker .
Early life
Born in
Lincoln, Nebraska , Young was the only child of two working parents, his father, Dr. Paul E. Young, was an
ophthalmologist and his mother, Dr. Azzie Young, a
chemist .
[4]
[5] Due to the careers of both of his parents, his family moved frequently throughout his youth. Young lived in six different places before he reached the age of ten,
[4] but his family ultimately settled in
Topeka, Kansas . He first began to pursue writing when he was thirteen years old, after he attended a summer writing class at
Washburn University .
[6]
Young attended
Harvard College , where he studied with
Seamus Heaney and
Lucie Brock-Broido
[4] and became friends with writer
Colson Whitehead .
[7] He graduated in 1992, then held a
Stegner Fellowship at
Stanford University (1992–94), where he worked with
Denise Levertov . He received his
Master of Fine Arts from
Brown University , where
Michael S. Harper served as a significant influence.
[8]
Career
While in Boston and Providence, he was part of the African-American poetry group the
Dark Room Collective .
[4] He is heavily influenced by the poets
Langston Hughes ,
John Berryman , and
Emily Dickinson and by the artist
Jean-Michel Basquiat .
Young wrote much of his debut collection, Most Way Home, while still an undergraduate.
[9] Published by
William Morrow in 1995,
[7] Most Way Home was selected by
Lucille Clifton for the National Poetry Series and won
Ploughshares ' John C. Zacharis First Book Award.
[8] Writing in Ploughshares , Rob Arnold observes that in that first book Young "explores his own family's narratives, showing an uncanny awareness of voice and persona."
[9]
Young has described his next three books – To Repel Ghosts (named for a
Jean-Michel Basquiat painting),
Jelly Roll (a collection of love poems named for
Jelly Roll Morton ), and Black Maria – as an "American trilogy", calling the series Devil's Music.
[9]
Young's collection The Book of Hours (Knopf, 2014)
[10] won the 2015
Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize .
Young is also the author of For The Confederate Dead, Dear Darkness , Blues Laws: Selected and Uncollected Poems 1995–2015 (2016)
[11] and editor of Giant Steps: The New Generation of African American Writers (2000), Blues Poems (2003), Jazz Poems (2006), and John Berryman's Selected Poems (2004).
[9]
His poem "Black Cat Blues," originally published in
The Virginia Quarterly Review , was included in
The Best American Poetry 2005 . Young's poetry has also appeared in
The New Yorker ,
Poetry Magazine ,
The Paris Review ,
Ploughshares , and other literary magazines. In 2007, he served as guest editor for an issue of
Ploughshares .
[9] He has written on art and artists for museums in Los Angeles and Minneapolis.
His 2003 book of poems Jelly Roll was a finalist for the
National Book Award . Young was named a
Guggenheim Foundation Fellow in 2003, as well as an
NEA Literature Fellow in Poetry.
[12]
After stints at the
University of Georgia and
Indiana University , Young taught writing at
Emory University , where he was the Atticus Haygood Professor of English and Creative Writing, as well as the curator of the Raymond Danowski Poetry Library, a large collection of first and rare editions of poetry in English.
[13]
[14]
In September 2016,
[3] Young became the Director of the
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the
New York Public Library .
[15]
In March 2017, he was named poetry editor of
The New Yorker ,
[4] to begin in November 2017.
[3]
Young is working on two books: a non-fiction book called
Bunk on the U.S. history of lies and hoaxes, and a poetry collection that he has described as being "about African American history and also personal history, growing up in Kansas, which has a long black history including Langston Hughes and others."
[3]
In September 2020, he was named director of the
National Museum of African-American History and Culture , to begin in January 2021.
[2] Elected to the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences , the
American Academy of Arts and Letters , and the
Society of American Historians ,Young was also named a Chancellor of the
Academy of American Poets in 2020.
[16]
Personal life
Young lives in New York.
[3] He married Kate Tuttle, book columnist at
The Boston Globe
[17] in 2005.
[5]
Awards
Bibliography
Poetry
Collections
Young, Kevin (1995).
Most Way Home . New York, NY: William Morrow.
ISBN
978-0-6881-4032-8 .
OCLC
30544468 .
Young, Kevin (2001). To Repel Ghosts: Five Sides in B Minor . Cambridge, MA: Zoland Books.
ISBN
978-1-5819-5033-5 .
OCLC
45466205 .
Young, Kevin (2003).
Jelly Roll: A Blues . New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
ISBN
978-0-3754-1460-2 .
OCLC
49737128 .
Young, Kevin (2005). To Repel Ghosts: Remixed from the Original Masters . New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf.
ISBN
978-0-3757-1023-0 .
OCLC
57722526 .
Young, Kevin (produced and directed by) (2005).
Black Maria: Being the Adventures of Delilah Redbone & A.K.A. Jones: Poems . New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf.
ISBN
978-1-4000-4209-8 .
OCLC
55511276 .
Young, Kevin (2007).
For the Confederate Dead: Poems . New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf.
ISBN
978-0-3072-6435-0 .
OCLC
69734632 .
Young, Kevin (2008). Dear Darkness: Poems . New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf.
ISBN
978-0-3072-6434-3 .
OCLC
196315701 .
Young, Kevin (2011).
Ardency: A Chronicle of the Amistad Rebels . New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf.
ISBN
978-0-3072-6764-1 .
OCLC
635461180 .
Young, Kevin (2014). Book of Hours: Poems . Alfred A. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.
ISBN
978-0-3072-7224-9 .
OCLC
844789963 .
Young, Kevin (2016). Blue Laws: Selected & Uncollected Poems, 1995-2015 . New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf.
ISBN
978-0-3853-5150-8 .
OCLC
908838408 .
Young, Kevin (2018). Brown: Poems . New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf.
ISBN
978-1-5247-3255-4 .
OCLC
992437731 .
Young, Kevin (2021). Stones . London: Jonathan Cape Ltd.
ISBN
1-78733-375-2 .
OCLC
1246285491 .
Anthologies (edited)
Young, Kevin, ed. (2003).
Blues Poems . New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf (Everyman's Library Pocket Poets).
ISBN
978-0-3754-1458-9 .
OCLC
52312415 .
Berryman, John (2004). Young, Kevin (ed.).
John Berryman: Selected Poems . New York, NY: Library of America.
ISBN
978-1-9310-8269-3 .
OCLC
493664682 .
Young, Kevin, ed. (2006). Jazz Poems . London: Alfred A. Knopf (Everyman's Library Pocket Poets).
ISBN
978-1-8415-9754-6 .
OCLC
988704157 .
Young, Kevin, ed. (2010). The Art of Losing: Poems of Grief and Healing . New York, NY: Bloomsbury.
ISBN
978-1-6204-0484-3 .
OCLC
852253772 .
Young, Kevin, ed. (2012). The Hungry Ear: Poems of Food & Drink . New York, NY: Bloomsbury.
ISBN
978-1-6081-9551-0 .
OCLC
778422545 .
Clifton, Lucille; Morrison, Toni (foreword by) (2012). Young, Kevin; Glaser, Michael S. (eds.). The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton 1965-2010 .
ISBN
978-1-9426-8300-1 .
OCLC
912319753 .
List of poems
Title
Year
First published
Reprinted/collected
Money Road
2016
Young, Kevin (22 February 2016).
"Money Road" . The New Yorker . 92 (2): 54.
Non-fiction
Theses and dissertations
Young, Kevin (1992). Most Way Home (Thesis/dissertation). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University.
OCLC
26555488 .
References
^
"Kevin Young" .
AALBC.com . Retrieved 29 July 2021 .
^
a
b Bowley, Graham (30 September 2020).
"Kevin Young, Poet and Author, Is Named to Lead African American Museum" .
The New York Times .
Archived from the original on 30 September 2020. Retrieved 1 October 2020 .
^
a
b
c
d
e Peet, Lisa (21 March 2017).
"Kevin Young: Director of NYPL's Schomburg Center, New Yorker Poetry Editor" . Library Journal .
Archived from the original on 3 March 2018. Retrieved 13 June 2017 .
^
a
b
c
d
e Oliviero, Helena (15 March 2017).
"Kevin Young is named new poetry editor at The New Yorker" . Atlanta Journal-Constitution .
Archived from the original on 10 February 2018. Retrieved 8 June 2017 .
^
a
b
"Kate Tuttle and Kevin Young" . The New York Times . 8 May 2005.
ISSN
0362-4331 .
Archived from the original on 21 December 2015. Retrieved 13 June 2017 .
^ Gioia, Dana (2004).
Twentieth-Century American Poetry . Boston: McGraw-Hill. pp.
1041–1042 .
ISBN
0-07-240019-6 .
^
a
b Purcell, Andrew (20 May 2017).
"Colson Whitehead: 'The truth of things, not the facts' " . Western Advocate .
Archived from the original on 8 August 2017. Retrieved 12 June 2017 .
^
a
b Lee, Don (Winter 1996–1997).
"Kevin Young, Zacharis Award" . Ploughshares (71).
Archived from the original on 28 October 2017. Retrieved 13 June 2017 .
^
a
b
c
d
e
f Arnold, Rob (Spring 2006).
"About Kevin Young" . Ploughshares (99).
Archived from the original on 29 October 2017. Retrieved 13 June 2017 .
^
a
b Matthews, James.
"A Q&A with Kevin Young" . Arkansas Times .
Archived from the original on 23 April 2016. Retrieved 12 June 2017 .
^
"PW's Top Authors Pick Their Favorite Books of 2016" . Publishers Weekly .
Archived from the original on 11 March 2017. Retrieved 12 June 2017 .
^ "University Honors & Awards:
Honoree - Kevin Young"
Archived 6 October 2014 at the
Wayback Machine , Indiana University.
^ Poetry Foundation (25 May 2019).
"Kevin Young" . Poetry Foundation .
Archived from the original on 26 May 2019. Retrieved 26 May 2019 .
^
"Kevin Young On Blues, Poetry And 'Laughing To Keep From Crying' " . Fresh Air . NPR.
Archived from the original on 8 December 2017. Retrieved 12 June 2017 .
^ Kelly, William P. (1 August 2016).
"Introducing the New Director of the Schomburg Center, Kevin Young" . NYPL blog .
Archived from the original on 7 August 2016. Retrieved 1 August 2016 .
^ Young, Kevin.
"Kevin Young: Extended Biography" . www.kevinyoungpoetry.com . Retrieved 1 February 2022 .
^ Redmon, Jeremy (13 February 2016).
"Broad range of music fuels Decatur poet Kevin Young's new collection" . Atlanta Journal-Constitution .
Archived from the original on 29 March 2017. Retrieved 8 June 2017 .
^
"Kevin Young" .
John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation . 2003.
Archived from the original on 1 May 2018. Retrieved 1 May 2018 .
^
"United States Artists Official Website" . Archived from
the original on 10 November 2010. Retrieved 26 May 2019 .
^ Tobar, Hector (14 January 2013).
"National Book Critics Circle announces finalists for awards" . Los Angeles Times .
ISSN
0458-3035 .
Archived from the original on 18 October 2015. Retrieved 8 June 2017 .
^ Carolyn Kellogg (14 August 2013).
"Jacket Copy: PEN announces winners of its 2013 awards" .
Los Angeles Times .
Archived from the original on 16 August 2013. Retrieved 14 August 2013 .
^
https://englishcomplit.unc.edu/previous-winners-of-thomas-wolfe-prize-and-lecture/ .
^
"Georgia Writers Hall of Fame" . georgiawritershalloffame.org .
Archived from the original on 3 August 2020. Retrieved 25 January 2020 .
^
"T S Eliot Prize shortlist announced" . Books+Publishing . 15 October 2021. Retrieved 15 October 2021 .
^ Rosenberg, John S. (29 February 2024).
"Kevin Young Named 2024 Harvard Arts Medalist" .
Harvard Magazine . Retrieved 29 February 2024 .
^ Schneier, Matthew (7 November 2017).
"In an Age of Fake News, a Historian of the Hoax" . The New York Times .
Archived from the original on 27 February 2018. Retrieved 26 February 2018 .
^ Dirda, Michael (29 November 2017).
"Liars, hucksters and fake news are nothing new: a history lesson in hoaxes" .
The Washington Post .
Archived from the original on 27 February 2018. Retrieved 26 February 2018 .
^ Quinn, Annalisa (18 November 2017).
" 'Bunk' Is Encyclopedic, Fascinating — And Frustrating" .
NPR .
Archived from the original on 26 February 2018. Retrieved 26 February 2018 .
External links
International National Academics Artists Other