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Albert James Young (May 31, 1939 – April 17, 2021) was an American poet, novelist, essayist, screenwriter, and professor. He was named Poet Laureate of California by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger from 2005 to 2008. Young's many books included novels, collections of poetry, essays, and memoirs. His work appeared in literary journals and magazines including Paris Review, Ploughshares, Essence, The New York Times, Chicago Review, Seattle Review, Brilliant Corners: A Journal of Jazz & Literature, Chelsea, Rolling Stone, Gathering of the Tribes, and in anthologies including the Norton Anthology of African American Literature, and the Oxford Anthology of African American Literature.
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.
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 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.
In the 1980s and 1990s, as a cultural ambassador for the United States Information Agency, he traveled throughout South Asia, Egypt, Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian West Bank.
In 2001, he traveled to the Persian Gulf to lecture on American and African-American literature and culture in Kuwait and in Bahrain for the U.S. Department of State. Subsequent lecture tours took him to Southern Italy in 2004, and to Italy in 2005. His poetry and prose have been translated into Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Norwegian, Serbo-Croatian, Polish, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, German, Urdu, Korean, and other languages. Blending story, recitation and song, Young often performed with musicians.
On May 15, 2005, he was named Poet Laureate of California by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. In appointing Young as Poet Laureate in 2005, the Governor Schwarzenegger praised him: "He is an educator and a man with a passion for the Arts. His remarkable talent and sense of mission to bring poetry into the lives of Californians is an inspiration." Muriel Johnson, Director of the California Arts Council declared: "Like jazz, Al Young is an original American voice."
In 2009, Young was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters (L.H.D.) from Whittier College.
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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