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| Kevin Young |
Kevin Young
Kevin Young was born in Lincoln, Nebraska. He studied under Seamus Heaney and Lucie Brock-Broido at Harvard University and, while a student there, became a member of the Dark Room Collective, a community of African American writers. He was awarded a Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University and later earned an MFA from Brown University. He is the author of many books of poetry, including Brown (2018), Blue Laws: Selected & Uncollected Poems 1995–2015, and Book of Hours (2014). Three of Young’s books form what he calls “an American trilogy”: To Repel Ghosts (2001), which explores the paintings of Jean-Michel Basquiat; Jelly Roll (2003), a collection of blues poems; and Black Maria (2005), a film noir. His first book of poetry, Most Way Home (1995), was selected for the National Poetry Series by Lucille Clifton, who describes the collection as re-creating “an inner history which is compelling and authentic and American.” Reviewing Young’s work in 2007, critic Amy Guth largely agrees with Clifton, and adds, “Perhaps the most noticeable characteristic of Young’s work ... is the musical quality so fundamentally ingrained and supplied to each piece.”
