About the Author

KEVIN YOUNG is the author of six previous collections of poetry and the editor of Library of America's John Berryman- Selected Poems, the Everyman's Library Pocket Poets anthologies Blue Poems and Jazz Poems, and Giant Steps- The New Generation of African American Writers. His book Jelly Roll was a finalist for the National Book Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and won the Paterson Poetry Prize, and For the Confederate Dead he won the 2007 Quill Award for poetry. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, and is currently the Atticus Haygood Professor of English and Creative Writing and curator of the Raymond Danowski Poetry Library at Emory University in Atlanta.