Kevin Young is the poetry editor of The New Yorker, where he hosts the poetry podcast, and is widely regarded as one of the leading poets of his generation. He was the director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture from 2008 – 2016, and served as Curator of the Raymond Danowski Poetry Library—a 75,000-volume collection of rare and modern poetry housed at Emory University – from 2005 – 2016. He was also director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture from 2021-2025. He is the author of sixteen books of poetry and prose, including Brown (Knopf, 2018); Blue Laws: Selected & Uncollected Poems 1995-2015 (Knopf, 2016), longlisted for the National Book Award; Book of Hours (Knopf, 2014), a finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award and winner of the Lenore Marshall Prize for Poetry; and Stones (Knopf, 2021) a Library Journal Top Ten poetry titles of 2021, and shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize. His collection Jelly Roll: a blues (Knopf, 2003) was a finalist for both the National Book Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. His next book of poetry will be Night Watch: Poems (Knopf, September 2, 2025). His children’s book Emile and the Field (RHCB/Make Me a World, 2022) was illustrated by Chioma Ebinama and was one of the New York Times’ Best Children’s Books of 2022.