Kevin Young

Kevin Young (1970- ) is the author of many books of poetry, including Stones (2021), a finalist for the T.S. Eliot Prize; Brown (2018); Blue Laws: Selected & Uncollected Poems 1995–2015.  Young was born in Lincoln, Nebraska. He studied under Seamus Heaney and Lucie Brock-Broido at Harvard University. While a student at Harvard, he became a member of the Dark Room Collective, a community of African American writers. Kevin is a poet, essayist, museum director, editor and professor.

What anchors us

to this thirst 

& earth, its threats

& thinnesses—

its ways of waning

& making the most of—

of worse & much

worse—if not

this light lifting

up over the ridge

— Kevin Young from ‘Ledge’