Kevin Young graduated from Harvard College in 1992, where he studied under Seamus Heaney and Lucie Brock-Broido. He went on to hold a Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University from 1992 to 1994, and earned his Master of Fine Arts from Brown University. His literary career launched with his debut poetry collection, ‘Most Way Home,’ in 1995, which earned him the National Poetry Series and Ploughshares’ John C. Zacharis First Book Award.

In March 2017, he was named poetry editor of The New Yorker, a role he commenced in November 2017. In September 2016, Young embarked on a significant phase of institutional leadership, becoming the Director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library. His non-fiction work, ‘Bunk: The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts, and Fake News’ (2017), became a New York Times Notable Book and was longlisted for the National Book Award, also earning the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in Nonfiction, a Georgia Writers Hall of Fame Inductee recognition, and finalist nominations for both the National Book Critics Circle Award and the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award. He was honored with the Thomas Wolfe Prize in 2017.

A pivotal career move occurred in September 2020 with his appointment as director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, officially starting in January 2021. Young was named a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 2020 and is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Society of American Historians. His recent poetry collection, ‘Stones,’ was shortlisted for the prestigious T. S.

Eliot Prize in 2021. Most recently, in 2024, Kevin Young was awarded the Harvard Arts Medal, continuing his distinguished career as a poet, professor, and leader in prominent cultural institutions.