Kevin Young’s work “exemplifies what poetry can do in the world when language works at its full power,” according to poet A. Van Jordan.
Award-winning author and prolific poet Kevin Young will visit Hendrix College as the Murphy Visiting Poet on April 14, 2016. He will read from and discuss his work in Reves Recital Hall at 7:30 p.m. This event is free and open to the public and will be followed by a reception and book signing in Trieschmann Gallery.
Kevin Young is widely regarded as one of the leading poets of his generation. He has written 11 books of poetry and prose, most recently Blue Laws: Selected & Uncollected Poems 1995-2015 (2016). He has also penned Book of Hours (2014),
a finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award and winner of the Lenore Marshall Prize for Poetry. Young was a finalist for both the National Book Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Award for Poetry for his book Jelly Roll: A Blues (2003).
Young finds meaning and inspiration in African American music, particularly the blues, and in the bittersweet history of Black America. His nonfiction work The Grey Album: On the Blackness of
Blackness received the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize and the PEN Open Book Award. It was also named a New York Times Notable Book for 2012 and was a finalist for the 2013 National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism. In addition to his own writing, Young has edited eight collections of poetry,
including The Collected Poems of Lucille
Clifton, 1965-2010 (2012) and The
Hungry Ear: Poems of Food and Drink (2010).
Young is the Charles Howard Candler Professor of Creative Writing and English at Emory University, where he also works as the Curator for the Literary Collections and the renowned Raymond Danowski Poetry Library.
The Murphy Visiting Poet Series has included such nationally and internationally recognized poets as Allen Ginsberg, Seamus Heaney, Gwendolyn Brooks, Robert Pinsky, Rita Dove, Ishmael Reed, Denise Levertov, Donald Hall, Jorie Graham, Louise Glück, Michael Ondaatje, and Carolyn Forché.
This event is sponsored by the Hendrix-Murphy Foundation Programs in Literature and Language, which are designed to enhance and enrich the study and teaching of literature and language at Hendrix College. For more information about this and future events, please contact
Henryetta Vanaman, 501-450-4597 or vanaman@hendrix.edu.
About Hendrix College
Hendrix College is a private liberal arts college in Conway, Arkansas. Founded in 1876 and affiliated with the United Methodist Church since 1884, Hendrix is featured in Colleges That Change Lives: 40 Schools That Will Change the Way You Think about Colleges and is nationally recognized in numerous college guides, lists, and rankings for academic quality, community, innovation, and value. For more information, visit
www.hendrix.edu.