Al Young

Al Young studied at University of Michigan and University of California, Berkeley. Persis Karim is recorded as having studied under Al Young. The recorded working language is English. The field of work recorded is creative and professional writing, American literature and creative writing. Employment is recorded with Stanford University.

• Name — Al Young • Born — 31 May 1939 • Birthplace — Ocean Springs, Mississippi, U.S. • Died — 17 April 2021 • Place of death — Concord, California, U.S. • Alma Mater — University of California, Berkeley (BA) • Awards — Poet Laureate of California (2005–2008) • Education — University of Michigan • Other Names — Earnest James Young • Birth Name — Albert James Young • Children — 1 • Spouse — Arline June Belch (m. 1963–2016; death)

Born May 31, 1939, in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, on the Gulf Coast near Biloxi. His maternal grandparents had been sharecroppers. Young attended the "Kingston School for Colored", a segregated school in the South. He graduated in 1957 from Central High School in Detroit. From 1957 to 1960 he attended the University of Michigan. At the University of Michigan he co-edited Generation, the campus literary magazine. He also met classmate Janet Coleman in Michigan, whom he later co-authored work with in 1989. In 1961 he moved to the San Francisco Bay Area. Settling at first in Berkeley, California, he held a wide variety of jobs (including folksinger, lab aide, disk jockey, medical photographer, clerk typist, employment counselor). He graduated with honors in 1969 from University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley), with a degree in Spanish.

Young taught poetry, fiction writing and American literature at UC Berkeley; University of California, Santa Cruz from 1983 until the early 1990s; University of California, Davis; Bowling Green State University; Foothill College; the Colorado College; Rice University; the University of Washington; the University of Michigan; and the University of Arkansas. From 1969 to 1976, he was Edward B. Jones Lecturer in Creative Writing at Stanford University near Palo Alto, where he lived and worked for three decades. In the 1970s, he wrote film scripts Joseph Strick, Sidney Poitier, Bill Cosby, and Richard Pryor. He also wrote linear notes for George Benson's Breezin album (1976). In 2002, he was appointed the San José State University's Lurie Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing. He also taught at Charles University in the Czech Republic under the auspices of the Prague Summer Programs. In the spring of 2003 he taught poetry at Davidson College (Davidson, NC), where he was McGee Professor in Writing. In the fall of 2003, as the first Coffey Visiting professor of Creative Writing at Appalachian State University in Boone, NC, he taught a poetry workshop. From 2003 to 2006, he served on the faculty of Cave Canem's summer workshop retreats for African-American poets. His students included poet Persis Karim.

He was married to technical writer and editor Arline June Young (née Belch) from 1963 until her death in 2016. The couple had one child, a son named Michael. After living in Palo Alto from 1969 to 1999, in 2000 Young returned to Berkeley, where he continued to freelance. In February 2019, Young had a stroke. He died of complications of the stroke on April 17, 2021, in Concord, California, aged 81.

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• Jazz Idiom: blueprints, stills, and frames: the jazz photography of Charles L. Robinson (photographs and comments by Charles L. Robinson, poetic takes and riffs by Al Young, Heyday Books, 2008)

• The Literature of California, Volume 1: Native American Beginnings to 1945 (with Jack Hicks, James D. Houston and Maxine Hong Kingston, eds., University of California Press, 2000) • African American Literature: A Brief Introduction and Anthology (HarperCollins College Publishers, 1996) • Yardbird Lives! (co-edited with Ishmael Reed, Grove Press, 1978)

• Sparkle (1972), for the Robert Stigwood Organisation (RSO) • Nigger (1972), for Joseph Strick and Laser Films, Inc., based on Dick Gregory's autobiography • A Piece of the Action (1977), for Sidney Poitier and Verdon Productions, starring Bill Cosby • Bustin' Loose (1981), starring Richard Pryor, Cicely Tyson

Al Young is recorded as having received Guggenheim Fellowship, PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award and Fulbright Scholarship.