Young, Al, 1939–2021

Albert James Young (1939 May 31–2021 April 17) was an African American poet, novelist, essayist, screenwriter, and professor.

Young was born in Ocean Springs, Mississippi. He spent his early years in the segregated south where he attended the Kingston School for the Colored. The family later moved to Detroit; Young began publishing poems and articles in his teens. From 1957 to 1961, Young attended the University of Michigan, where he co-edited Generation, the campus literary magazine. He dropped out and moved to the West Coast, finally settling in Berkeley (Calif.).

Before returning to school, Young worked a variety of jobs, including as a photographer, warehouseman, clerk-typist, interviewer for the California Department of Employment, and yard clerk for the Southern Pacific Railroad. He also performed as a singer and guitarist of folk songs and blues; he later gave up performing professionally.

Young graduated from UC Berkeley in 1969 and began a lifelong career as an instructor of writing, poetry and American literature. He taught all around the country, including appointments at Stanford University, UC Berkeley, UC Santa Cruz, UC Davis and many other colleges. He was a longtime poetry instructor at the Community of Writers, a summer workshop in what was then known as Squaw Valley (now Olympic Valley) in Lake Tahoe.

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger of California appointed Young the state poet laureate in 2005.

Young 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 suffered a stroke. He died of complications of the stroke on April 17, 2021, in Concord, California, aged 81.