Kevin Young

Born 1970 Lincoln, NE

Kevin Young is an American poet and the director of the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Places Lived

Lincoln, NE
Topeka, KS

Author Of

Nonfiction
Poetry

Keywords

Poet; African American poet

Education

Graduated from Harvard College, 1992.
Stegner Fellowship, Stanford University, 1992-94.
Master of Fine Arts, Brown University.

Occupation

Andrew W. Mellon Director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture
Poetry editor of The New Yorker

Places Worked

Former Director of NYC Public Library's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
Curator of the Raymond Danowski Poetry Library at Emory University
Curator of Literary Collections, Rose Library at Emory University

Honors

Lenore Marshall Prize from the Academy of American Poets
Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize
PEN Open Book Award
Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in Nonfiction
University Distinguished Professor at Emory University
Stegner Fellowship in Poetry at Stanford University
Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship
MacDowell Colony Fellowship
Honorary doctorate from Beloit College

Bibliography

Most Way Home. 1995.
To Repel Ghosts (the double album). 2001.
Jelly Roll: a blues. 2003.
To Repel Ghosts: The Remix. 2005.
Black Maria. 2005.
For the Confederate Dead. 2007.
Dear Darkness. 2008.
Ardency: A Chronicle of the Amistad Rebels. 2011.
The Grey Album: On the Blackness of Blackness. 2012.
Book of Hours. 2014.
Blue Laws: Selected & Uncollected Poems 1995 - 2015. 2016.
Bunk: The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts, and Fake News. 2017.
Brown. 2018.
African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle & Song. Editor, 2020.
Stones. 2021.
Emile and the Field. 2022.

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