Kevin Young (poet)



Kevin Young (born 8 November 1970 Lincoln, Nebraska) is an American poet and teacher of poetry. Young graduated from Harvard College in 1992, was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University (1992–1994), and received his Master of Fine Arts from Brown University. While in Boston and Providence, he was part of the African-American poetry group, The Dark Room Collective. He is heavily influenced by the poets Langston Hughes, John Berryman, and Emily Dickinson and by the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat.

Career
Young is the author of Most Way Home, To Repel Ghosts, Jelly Roll, Black Maria, For The Confederate Dead, Dear Darkness, and editor of Giant Steps: The New Generation of African American Writers; Blues Poems; Jazz Poems and John Berryman's Selected Poems.

His Black Cat Blues, originally published in The Virginia Quarterly Review, was included in The Best American Poetry 2005. Young's poetry has 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. 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.

After stints at the University of Georgia and Indiana University, Young now teaches writing at Emory University, where he is 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.

Awards

 * In 2009 Young won a Fellow Award from United States Artists.
 * 2007 Quill Award
 * 2007 Patterson Poetry Prize for Sustained Literary Achievement.
 * 2003 Finalist for National Book Award and Los Angeles Time Book Award.
 * 2003 Winner Patterson Poetry Prize.
 * 1993 Most Way Home selected for National Poetry Series by Lucille Clifton, awarded John C. Zacharis First Book Prize from Ploughshares Magazine.

Collections

 * Most Way Home: Poems. Zoland Books, 1998.
 * To Repel Ghosts: Five Sides in B Minor. Zoland Books, 2002.
 * Jelly Roll: A Blues. Knopf, 2003.
 * Blues Poems (Everyman's Library Pocket Poets). Everyman's Library, 2003. (Editor)
 * John Berryman: Selected Poems. Library of America, 2004. (Editor)
 * Black Maria: Poems Produced and Directed by. Knopf, 2005.
 * Jazz Poems (Everyman's Library Pocket Poets. Everyman's Library, 2006. (Editor)
 * For the Confederate Dead. Knopf, 2007.
 * Dear Darkness: Poems. Knopf, 2008.
 * Ardency. Random House, 2011.