Kevin Young

"Keeping up with him is like trying to keep up with Bob Dylan or Prince in their primes. Even the bootlegs have bootlegs."

—Dwight Garner, New York Times

Biography

Kevin Young is the author of sixteen books of poetry and prose, including his most recent, Night Watch. He is the poetry editor of The New Yorker, where he hosts the Poetry Podcast, and the editor of eleven volumes, including A Century of Poetry in the New Yorker, 1925-2025 and the acclaimed anthology African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle & Song. He currently serves as the Distinguished Writer in Residence at New York University.

Other books include Stones, shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize; Blue Laws: Selected & Uncollected Poems 1995-2015, longlisted for the National Book Award; Book of Hours, winner of the Lenore Marshall Prize from the Academy of American Poets; Jelly Roll: a blues, a finalist for both the National Book Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Poetry; Bunk a New York Times Notable Book, longlisted for the National Book Award and named on many “best of” lists for 2017; and The Grey Album, winner of the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize and the PEN Open Book Award, a New York Times Notable Book, and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism. His picture book, Emile and the Field, was named one of the "Best Children's Books of 2022" by the New York Times.

His honors include a Stegner Fellowship in Poetry at Stanford University, a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, a MacDowell Fellowship, and the Harvard Arts medal. He holds honorary doctorates from Brown University, SUNY Purchase, and Beloit College. Named a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 2020, Young is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Society of American Historians.