Ithaca College

The School of Humanities and Sciences and the Department of Writing are pleased to present award-winning poet Kevin Young as part of this semester’s Distinguished Visiting Writers Series. He will read from his work at 7:30pm on Wednesday, September 17 in Clark Lounge in Campus Center.

The reading is free and open to the public. A question-and-answer period and a book-signing will follow.

Kevin Young is the author of the poetry collections Book of Hours; Ardency: A Chronicle of the Amistad Rebels; Dear Darkness; For the Confederate Dead; Black Maria; Jelly Roll: A Blues, a finalist for both the National Book Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Award; and To Repel Ghosts: Five Sides in B Minor, a finalist for the James Laughlin Award of the Academy of American Poets. Young was a National Poetry Series winner for Most Way Home, which also received the John C. Zacharis First Book Award of Ploughshares magazine.

Young is also the author of The Grey Album, winner of the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize and the PEN Open Book Award and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism. He is currently Atticus Haygood Professor of Creative Writing and English at Emory University in Georgia.

Poet Lucille Clifton has said of Young’s work, “This poet’s gift of storytelling and understanding of the music inherent in the oral tradition of language re-creates for us an inner history which is compelling and authentic and American.”

Listen to Kevin Young talk about listening to the blues, writing about place, and “laughing to keep from crying” on NPR’s Fresh Air. You can also read poems from his latest collection, Book of Hours.

For more information about the Distinguished Visiting Writers Series or to request special accommodations, contact Eleanor Henderson at 274-3324 or ehenderson@ithaca.edu. We ask that requests for accommodations be made as soon as possible.

Visit the Events Calendar posting for more information.