Al Young
Encyclopedia
Al Young is an American
poet, novelist, essayist, screenwriter, and professor. On May 15, 2005 he was named Poet Laureate
of California
by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger
. In appointing Young as Poet Laureate, the Governor 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." Muriel Johnson, Director
of the California Arts Council
declared: "Like jazz, Al Young is an original American voice." Young’s many books include novels, collections of poetry, essays, and memoirs. His work has 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.
, Mississippi
on the Gulf Coast near Biloxi, Al Young grew up in the rural South of villages and small towns, and in urban, industrial Detroit. From 1957-1960 he attended the University of Michigan
, where he co-edited Generation, the campus literary magazine. In 1961 he moved to the San Francisco Bay Area
. Settling at first in Berkeley
, he held a variety of colorful jobs (folksinger, lab aide, disk jockey, medical photographer, clerk typist, employment counselor) before graduating with honors from U.C. Berkeley
with a degree in Spanish
. His marriage in 1963 to technical writer and editor Arline Young produced one child: their son Michael, born in 1971. From 1969-1976 he was Edward B. Jones Lecturer in Creative Writing at Stanford
near Palo Alto, where he lived and worked for three decades. In the year 2000 he returned to Berkeley, where he continues to freelance.
, Foothill College
, the Colorado College
, Rice University
, the University of Washington
, the University of Michigan, the University of Arkansas
, San José State University
, where he was appointed the 2002 Lurie Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing, and Charles University
in the Czech Republic
under the auspices of the Prague Summer Programs. In the spring of 2003 he taught poetry at Davidson College
(Davidson, NC), where he was McGee Professor in Writing. In the fall of 2003, as the first Coffey Visiting Professor of Creative Writing at Appalachian State University
in Boone
, NC, he taught a poetry workshop. From 2003-2006 he served on the faculty of Cave Canem’s summer workshop retreats for African American poets.
Fellowships, the PEN-Library of Congress Award for Short Fiction, the PEN-USA Award for Non-Fiction, two Pushcart Prizes, two The New York Times Notable Book of the year citations, an Arts Council Silicon Valley Fellowship, the Stephen Henderson Achievement Award for Poetry, Radio Pacifica’s KPFA Peace Prize, the Glenna Luschei Distinguished Poetry Fellowship, and the Richard Wright Award for Excellence in Literature. He has twice received the American Book Award
, for Bodies and Soul: Musical Memoirs (1982) and The Sound of Dreams Remembered: Poems 1990-2000 (2002).
In the 1970s he wrote film scripts for producer Joseph Strick, Sidney Poitier, Bill Cosby, and Richard Pryor. In the 1980s and 90’s, as a cultural ambassador for the United States Information Agency, he traveled throughout South Asia, Egypt, Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian West Bank. In 2001 he traveled to the Persian Gulf to lecture on American and African American literature and culture in Kuwait and in Bahrain for the U.S. Department of State. Subsequent lecture tours took him to Southern Italy in 2004, and to Italy in 2005. His poetry and prose have been translated into Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Norwegian, Serbo-Croatian, Polish, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, German, Urdu, Korean, and other languages. Blending story, recitation and song, Young often performs with musicians.
Chapbooks
Musical Memoirs
Novels
Collaborations
Anthologies Edited
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
poet, novelist, essayist, screenwriter, and professor. On May 15, 2005 he was named Poet Laureate
Poet Laureate
A poet laureate is a poet officially appointed by a government and is often expected to compose poems for state occasions and other government events...
of California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Arnold Alois Schwarzenegger is an Austrian-American former professional bodybuilder, actor, businessman, investor, and politician. Schwarzenegger served as the 38th Governor of California from 2003 until 2011....
. In appointing Young as Poet Laureate, the Governor 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." Muriel Johnson, Director
Technical director
The Technical Director or Technical Manager is usually a senior technical person within a software company, film studio, theatrical company or television studio...
of the California Arts Council
California Arts Council
The California Arts Council is a state agency based in Sacramento. Its eleven council members are appointed by the Governor and the state Legislature...
declared: "Like jazz, Al Young is an original American voice." Young’s many books include novels, collections of poetry, essays, and memoirs. His work has 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.
Biography
Born May 31, 1939 at Ocean SpringsOcean Springs, Mississippi
Ocean Springs is a city in Jackson County, Mississippi, United States, about east of Biloxi. It is part of the Pascagoula, Mississippi Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 17,225 at the 2000 census...
, Mississippi
Mississippi
Mississippi is a U.S. state located in the Southern United States. Jackson is the state capital and largest city. The name of the state derives from the Mississippi River, which flows along its western boundary, whose name comes from the Ojibwe word misi-ziibi...
on the Gulf Coast near Biloxi, Al Young grew up in the rural South of villages and small towns, and in urban, industrial Detroit. From 1957-1960 he attended the University of Michigan
University of Michigan
The University of Michigan is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship campus of the University of Michigan...
, where he co-edited Generation, the campus literary magazine. In 1961 he moved to the San Francisco Bay Area
San Francisco Bay Area
The San Francisco Bay Area, commonly known as the Bay Area, is a populated region that surrounds the San Francisco and San Pablo estuaries in Northern California. The region encompasses metropolitan areas of San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose, along with smaller urban and rural areas...
. Settling at first in Berkeley
Berkeley, California
Berkeley is a city on the east shore of the San Francisco Bay in Northern California, United States. Its neighbors to the south are the cities of Oakland and Emeryville. To the north is the city of Albany and the unincorporated community of Kensington...
, he held a variety of colorful jobs (folksinger, lab aide, disk jockey, medical photographer, clerk typist, employment counselor) before graduating with honors from U.C. Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
with a degree in Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
. His marriage in 1963 to technical writer and editor Arline Young produced one child: their son Michael, born in 1971. From 1969-1976 he was Edward B. Jones Lecturer in Creative Writing at Stanford
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
near Palo Alto, where he lived and worked for three decades. In the year 2000 he returned to Berkeley, where he continues to freelance.
Teaching career
Young has taught poetry, fiction writing and American literature at U.C. Berkeley, U.C. Santa Cruz, U.C. Davis, Bowling Green State UniversityBowling Green State University
Bowling Green State University, often referred to as Bowling Green or BGSU, is a public, coeducational research university located in Bowling Green, Ohio, United States. The institution was granted a charter in 1910 by the State of Ohio as part of the Lowry Bill, which also established Kent State...
, Foothill College
Foothill College
Foothill College is a community college located in Los Altos Hills, California and is part of the Foothill-De Anza Community College District. It was founded on January 15, 1957 by Founding Superintendent and President Dr. Calvin C. Flint.-History:...
, the Colorado College
Colorado College
The Colorado College is a private liberal arts college in Colorado Springs, Colorado, United States, in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. It was founded in 1874 by Thomas Nelson Haskell...
, Rice University
Rice University
William Marsh Rice University, commonly referred to as Rice University or Rice, is a private research university located on a heavily wooded campus in Houston, Texas, United States...
, the University of Washington
University of Washington
University of Washington is a public research university, founded in 1861 in Seattle, Washington, United States. The UW is the largest university in the Northwest and the oldest public university on the West Coast. The university has three campuses, with its largest campus in the University...
, the University of Michigan, the University of Arkansas
University of Arkansas
The University of Arkansas is a public, co-educational, land-grant, space-grant, research university. It is classified by the Carnegie Foundation as a research university with very high research activity. It is the flagship campus of the University of Arkansas System and is located in...
, San José State University
San José State University
San Jose State University is a public university located in San Jose, California, United States...
, where he was appointed the 2002 Lurie Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing, and Charles University
Charles University in Prague
Charles University in Prague is the oldest and largest university in the Czech Republic. Founded in 1348, it was the first university in Central Europe and is also considered the earliest German university...
in the Czech Republic
Czech Republic
The Czech Republic is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Poland to the northeast, Slovakia to the east, Austria to the south, and Germany to the west and northwest....
under the auspices of the Prague Summer Programs. In the spring of 2003 he taught poetry at Davidson College
Davidson College
Davidson College is a private liberal arts college in Davidson, North Carolina. The college has graduated 23 Rhodes Scholars and is consistently ranked in the top ten liberal arts colleges in the country by U.S. News and World Report magazine, although it has recently dropped to 11th in U.S. News...
(Davidson, NC), where he was McGee Professor in Writing. In the fall of 2003, as the first Coffey Visiting Professor of Creative Writing at Appalachian State University
Appalachian State University
Appalachian State University is a comprehensive , public, coeducational university located in Boone, North Carolina, United States. Appalachian State, also referred to as Appalachian, App State, or simply App, is the sixth largest institution in the University of North Carolina system...
in Boone
Boone, North Carolina
Boone is a town located in the Blue Ridge Mountains of western North Carolina, United States. Boone's population was reported as 17,122, as of 2010...
, NC, he taught a poetry workshop. From 2003-2006 he served on the faculty of Cave Canem’s summer workshop retreats for African American poets.
Honors and awards
His honors include Wallace Stegner, Guggenheim, Fulbright, and National Endowment for the ArtsNational Endowment for the Arts
The National Endowment for the Arts is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created by an act of the U.S. Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. Its current...
Fellowships, the PEN-Library of Congress Award for Short Fiction, the PEN-USA Award for Non-Fiction, two Pushcart Prizes, two The New York Times Notable Book of the year citations, an Arts Council Silicon Valley Fellowship, the Stephen Henderson Achievement Award for Poetry, Radio Pacifica’s KPFA Peace Prize, the Glenna Luschei Distinguished Poetry Fellowship, and the Richard Wright Award for Excellence in Literature. He has twice received the American Book Award
American Book Award
The American Book Award was established in 1978 by the Before Columbus Foundation. It seeks to recognize outstanding literary achievement by contemporary American authors, without restriction to race, sex, ethnic background, or genre...
, for Bodies and Soul: Musical Memoirs (1982) and The Sound of Dreams Remembered: Poems 1990-2000 (2002).
In the 1970s he wrote film scripts for producer Joseph Strick, Sidney Poitier, Bill Cosby, and Richard Pryor. In the 1980s and 90’s, as a cultural ambassador for the United States Information Agency, he traveled throughout South Asia, Egypt, Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian West Bank. In 2001 he traveled to the Persian Gulf to lecture on American and African American literature and culture in Kuwait and in Bahrain for the U.S. Department of State. Subsequent lecture tours took him to Southern Italy in 2004, and to Italy in 2005. His poetry and prose have been translated into Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Norwegian, Serbo-Croatian, Polish, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, German, Urdu, Korean, and other languages. Blending story, recitation and song, Young often performs with musicians.
Published works
Full-Length Poetry Collections- Something About the Blues: An Unlikely Collection of Poetry (Sourcebooks MediaFusion, 2008)
- Coastal Nights and Inland Afternoons: Poems 2001-2006 (Angel City Press, 2006)
- The Sound of Dreams Remembered: Poems 1990-2000 (Creative Arts Book Company, 2001)
- Heaven: Collected Poems: 1956-1990 (Creative Arts Book Company, 1992)
- The Blues Don't Change: New and Selected Poems (Louisiana State University Press, 1982)
- Geography of the Near Past (Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1976)
- The Song Turning Back into Itself (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971)
- Dancing (Corinth Books, 1969)
Chapbooks
- Conjugal Visits (Creative Arts Book Company, 1996)
- Straight No Chaser (Creative Arts Book, 2011)
Musical Memoirs
- Drowning in the Sea of Love (Ecco Press, 1995)
- Mingus Mingus: Two Memoirs (with Janet Coleman, Creative Arts Book Company, 1989)
- Things Ain't What They Used to Be (Creative Arts Book Company, 1986)
- Kinds of Blue (Creative Arts Book Company, 1984)
- Bodies & Soul (Creative Arts Book Company, 1981)
Novels
- Seduction By Light (Delta Fiction, 1988)
- Ask Me Now (New York: McGraw-Hill; San Francisco: San Francisco Book Co., 1980)
- Sitting Pretty (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1976)
- Who Is Angelina? (University of California Press, 1996, 1975)
- Snakes (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970)
Collaborations
- Jazz idiom : blueprints, stills, and frames : the jazz photography of Charles L. Robinson (photographs and comments by Charles L. Robinson, poetic takes and riffs by Al Young, Heyday Books, 2008)
Anthologies Edited
- The Literature of California, Volume 1: Native American Beginnings to 1945 (with Jack Hicks, James D. Houston and Maxine Hong Kingston, eds., University of California Press, 2000)
- African American Literature: A Brief Introduction and Anthology (HarperCollins College Publishers, 1996)
- Yardbird Lives! (co-edited with Ishmael Reed, Grove Press, 1978)
Sources
- The Fellowship of Southern Writers > Al Young Biography
- Library of Congress Online Catalog > Al Young
- Mississippi Writers & Musicians: Al Young Biography
External links
- Al Young's Personal Webpage
- The Academy of American Poets - Al Young
- VIDEO & AUDIO: U.C. Berkeley Webcasts > Lunch Poems by Al Young > November 3, 2005, 12:00PM > Morrison Library
- AUDIO: NPR > Morning Edition > California Poet Laureate Al Young's 'Blues > April 24, 2008
- AUDIO: The Writers's Almanac with Garrison Keillor > Poems by Al Young: Ponce de Leon: A Morning Walk > April 8, 1996
- REVIEW: The New York Times Sunday Book Review > Review by MICHAEL E. ROSS of Mingus/Mingus: Two Memoirs by Janet Coleman and Al Young > Sunday, October 1, 1989
- Angel City Press > Author Page > Al Young