Young, David

Born: 1936

Ohio connection: Resident

Oberlin

Born in Davenport, Iowa, David Young earned his undergraduate degree from Carleton College in 1958.  Later Young earned an M.A. and a doctorate degree from Yale University.  Until his retirement in 2003, David Young was Longman Professor of English at Oberlin College, where he continues to work as the editor of Oberlin College Press. His honors include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Ohio Arts Council. Field of Light and Shadow: Selected New Poems, his eleventh book of poetry, earned him the 2011 Ohioana Poetry Book Award. It is a career-spanning volume with poems that display an exquisite ear tuned to the natural world, to love and friendship, and to the continually renewable possibilities of language.

Awards
Tane Prize for poetry, Massachusetts Review, 1965; National Endowment for the Humanities fellow in England, 1967-68; U.S. Award, International Poetry Forum, 1968; Guggenheim fellow, 1978-79; National Endowment for the Arts fellow, 1981-82; major artist fellowship, Ohio Arts Council, 1990; Ohio State University Press/Journal Award, 1994.

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