Kevin Young is the author of a previous work of nonfiction, The Grey Album: On the Blackness of Blackness, which was a New York Times Notable Book, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism, and the winner of the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize. He is also the author of nine books of poetry, including Blue Laws: Selected and Uncollected Poems 1995–2015, which was named to the longlist for the National Book Award; Book of Hours, which won the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets; and Jelly Roll: A Blues, which was named a finalist for the National Book Award and for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. He is the editor of many books and anthologies, including The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton 1965–2010 and The Best American Poetry 2011. His most recent book is Bunk. Young is the director of the Schomberg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York City.

Young’s next nonfiction book, Bunk: The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts, and Fake News, will be out from Graywolf Press November 14, 2017. Young’s nonfiction book The Grey Album: On the Blackness of Blackness won the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize and the PEN Open Book Award; it was also a New York Times Notable Book for 2012 and a finalist for the 2013 National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism. He is the editor of eight other collections, most recently The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton, 1965-2010 and The Hungry Ear: Poems of Food and Drink. Young was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2016.

Young will be Poetry Editor of the New Yorker starting in November 2017.