Kevin Young (born November 8, 1970) Author of 11 books and editor of eight others, 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. 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,

Young attended Harvard College, where he studied with Seamus Heaney and Lucie Brock-Broido 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.

Career

While in Boston and Providence, he was part of the African-American poetry group the Dark Room Collective. Published by William Morrow in 1995, 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) 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).

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.

In September 2016,

In March 2017, he was named poetry editor of The New Yorker, 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. As of March 14, 2025, he has been on personal leave and is not leading the museum. He officially stepped down in April 2025.

  • 2007: Patterson Poetry Prize for Sustained Literary Achievement
  • 2007: Quill Awards (Poetry) for For the Confederate Dead
  • 2009: United States Artists, Fellow Award
  • 2009: Pat Conroy Southern Book Prize (Poetry) for Dear Darkness
  • 2013: National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism (finalist) for The Grey Album
  • 2013: PEN Open Book Award for The Grey Album
  • 2014: Claremont Graduate University, Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award for Book of Hours
  • 2015: Black Caucus of the American Library Association Literary Award (Poetry) for Book of Hours
  • 2015: Academy of American Poets, Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize for Book of Hours
  • 2017: Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in Nonfiction for Bunk
  • 2017: Georgia Writers Hall of Fame Inductee
  • 2017: National Book Critics Circle Award (finalist) for Bunk
  • 2017: PEN/Jean Stein Book Award (finalist) for Bunk
  • 2021: T. S. Eliot Prize (shortlist) for Stones
  • 2024: Harvard Arts Medal

Bibliography

Poetry

;Collections

;Anthologies (edited)

;List of poems

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Non-fiction

Theses and dissertations

References

  • Kevin Young reading at the Key West Literary Seminar, 2008
  • Biography at poets.org
  • Reading his poem "Elegy, Father's Day", on Slate.com
  • Levi Rubeck reviews Kevin Young's book Ardency
  • Kevin Young Interview, failbetter, October 6, 2009