Kevin Young

Kevin Young’s third book of poems, Jelly Roll: A Blues (Knopf, 2003), was recently named a finalist for the National Book Award. His first book Most Way Home was selected for the National Poetry Series and won the Zacharis First Book Award from Ploughshares; his second book of poems, To Repel Ghosts, is a “double album” based on the work of the late artist Jean-Michel Basquiat. Young is also the editor of Giant Steps: The New Generation of African American Writers and the Everyman Pocket Poets anthology Blues Poems. The recent recipient of a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, he is currently Ruth Lilly Professor of Poetry at Indiana University.