Albert James Young was an American poet, novelist, essayist, screenwriter, and professor. He was named Poet Laureate of California by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger from 2005 to 2008. Young's many books included novels, collections of poetry, essays, and memoirs. His work appeared in literary journals and magazines including Paris Review, Ploughshares, Essence, The New York Times, Chicago Review, Seattle Review, Brilliant Corners: A Journal of Jazz & Literature, Chelsea, Rolling Stone, Gathering of the Tribes, and in anthologies including the Norton Anthology of African American Literature, and the Oxford Anthology of African American Literature.
Early life
Born May 31, 1939, in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, on the Gulf Coast near Biloxi. His maternal grandparents had been sharecroppers. He graduated in 1957 from Central High School in Detroit.
In 1961 he moved to the San Francisco Bay Area. Settling at first in Berkeley, California, he held a wide variety of jobs (including folksinger, lab aide, disk jockey, medical photographer, clerk typist, employment counselor). He graduated with honors in 1969 from University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley), with a degree in Spanish. University of California, Davis; Bowling Green State University; Foothill College; the Colorado College; Rice University; the University of Washington; the University of Michigan; and the University of Arkansas.
From 1969 to 1976, he was Edward B. Jones Lecturer in Creative Writing at Stanford University near Palo Alto, where he lived and worked for three decades.
Honors and awards
In 1974, Young was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship in fiction. He was also awarded a Fulbright fellowship, two Puschart prizes, the PEN-USA Award, multiple National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, and a Wallace Stegner fellowship. He twice received the American Book Award, for Bodies and Soul: Musical Memoirs (1982), In appointing Young as Poet Laureate in 2005, the Governor Schwarzenegger praised him: "He is an educator and a man with a passion for the Arts. His remarkable talent and sense of mission to bring poetry into the lives of Californians is an inspiration."
Family life and death
He was married to technical writer and editor Arline June Young (née Belch) from 1963 until her death in 2016.
Published works
Poetry collections, full-length
- Nigger (1972), for Joseph Strick and Laser Films, Inc., based on Dick Gregory's autobiography