Kevin Young is the director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, recently named a National Historic Landmark, and poetry editor of the New Yorker, where he also hosts the poetry podcast. He is the author of thirteen books of poetry and prose, and the editor of nine others, including the anthology African American Poetry 1770-2020: 250 Years of Struggle & Song, forthcoming from the Library of America in fall 2020. Much of the research for the anthology was conducted at the Schomburg Center.

Young’s most recent books of poetry include Brown (Knopf, 2018), as featured on the Daily Show with Trevor Noah; Blue Laws: Selected & Uncollected Poems 1995-2015 (Knopf, 2016), longlisted for the National Book Award; and Book of Hours (Knopf, 2014), a finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award and winner of the Lenore Marshall Prize for Poetry from the Academy of American Poets. His collection Jelly Roll: a blues (Knopf, 2003) was a finalist for both the National Book Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prized. 

Young’s second nonfiction book Bunk: The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts & Fake News (Graywolf Press, 2017), won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in Nonfiction, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, was longlisted for the National Book Award, and was named a New York Times Notable Book. 

He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and was named a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 2020.