© servingthesierra.com

The upper Truckee River in winter

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Courtesy Dan I. Slobin Archives
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Gigging since mid-20th century: Al Young at piano, age 16; Detroit, Winter 1956

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Photo: Joyce Jenkins

L-R | Contributors Geri Digiorno, Michael McClure, M.L. Liebler, Al Young, Sue Doro say cheese to more than one camera at Diesel|A Bookstore, Oakland, following a reading for WORKING WORDS: Punching the Clock and Kicking Out the Jams (Coffee House Press), 16 January 2011

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Photo: Al Young

Sunset bridge (Oakland-SF Bay Bridge shot from Skates on the Bay, Berkeley Marina, early January 2011)

Al Young

Slow fade to the Berkeley Pier at sundown

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A Glacial Night in January Warmed by Sunset Poetry

Courtesy still from Sausalito Art Gallery slide show

Studio 333 at 333 Caledonia Street, Sausalito, CA 94965 | Click here to view poetry events at Why There Are Words

Photo: Zelda

L-R | Indigo Moor, Dona (La Tigresa) Nieto, Al Young, host/emcee Martin Hickel, Tracy Wynn, Giovanni Singleton (back to camera), Gini Savage, Adam David Miller

Photos: Al Young

Photographer Bill Klemens kindly repairs Al Young’s eyeglasses for the evening reading | Zelda (Suzanne Becker) all set and ever-ready to shoot up the night with her light

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Writer/therapist Katie Amatruda and Al Young

Al Young

La Tigresa in sacred idiom

© Zelda

Poets Indigo Moor, Dona Nieto (La Tigresa) and Al Young featured at Studio 333′s Sunset Poetry series in Sausalito, CA, 5 January 2011

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Photo by Waitress

Painter Elizabeth Hack, creator of the blog Peace, Hope & 9/11: Voices from San Francisco, web designer Niya Sisk, and contributing poet Al Young meet in Oakland’s Rockridge district on a December Saturday to discuss the site’s new format and look.

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December 21, 2010
Winter Solstice and a total lunar eclipse converge for the first time in 372 years.

The total lunar eclipse of Y2K 2000

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December 20, 2010
Photographs of the December 21, 2010 lunar eclipse taken by novelist Joanne Meschery as she watched it from her valley home in the High Sierras.

© Joanne Meschery

The northeastern side of the novelist-photographer’s High Sierras valley, looking towards Reno

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O.O. Gabugah

Escalator Palm, 16th & Mission BART Station, San Francisco

September in Moscow 2010

)))))

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Photo: Gloria Vando

Following his Sunday afternoon benefit reading for Beyond Baroque, Al Young poses beside an intriguing Thugs Against Drugs jalopy that has long been parked across the street from the beloved literary arts center in the heart of Venice, CA. | October 16, 2010

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A California/Oregon autumn medley

Photos: Al Young & PC Mack

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Courtesy Albany, CA Public Library

[L-R] Poets Camille Dungy, Cynthia Parker-Ohene (holding Camille’s baby Callie), Catherine Taylor and Al Young

Photo: Camille T. Dungy

Grand Uncle Al holding four-month-old Callie, daughter of Camille Dungy and Ray Black, at the Watershed Environmental Poetry Festival, Berkeley | October 2, 2010

Al Young sings some blues and reads his poem “Ars Poetica” with Barry Finnerty’s Jazz Roots Trio at the 2010 Watershed Festival

© Vivian Torrence

Bathing bluebirds, North Carolina

© Vivian Torrence
* Visit the artist-photographer’s site at www.viviantorrence.com

Full fall moon

Photo: Jason Moran

Saxophonist-composer Charles Lloyd, artist-photographer Dorothy Darr (Lloyd’s life-partner and guardian angel), and Al Young reunite backstage between sets at Yoshi’s in Oakland, CA, where the New Charles Lloyd Quartet performed to a packed house for two nights during the autumnal equinox | September 2010

Al Young

The New Charles Lloyd Quartet in action at Yoshi’s, Oakland | Charles Lloyd, tenor saxophone; Jason Moran, piano; Reuben Rogers, bass; Eric Harland, drums

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To and From Russia with Love

September 2010

PC Mack

Photos: WebEx

Photo- and screen-captures of video-conference moments as Al Young and Diem Jones in California sign on with Stanford’s Darlene Reddaway in St. Petersburg and Moscow for the Parshchikov Readings that she and poet Vadim Mesyats co-produced. Because greater Moscow and Silicon Valley’s Santa Clara County enjoy Sister Counties status, the conference featured Russian and Northern California-based American poets, including Michael Palmer, Nils Peterson, and Diem Jones.

Alexei Maximovich Parshchikov
(25 May 1954 – 3 April 2009)

To view a cluster of photo highlights from the St. Petersburg/Mosow Parshchikov Readings (with text in Russian), click here.

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Kent Crockett

Sunnyboy (age 16) with cherry tomatoes and Asian pears

Al Young

Tomatoes still dreaming of heat

Al Young

Ride a painted pony

Al Young

Window wishing

© Alonzo Young

Al with his writer buddies Floyd Salas and Claire Ortalda at Enkutatash (Ethiopian New Year’s Festival), Berkeley | September 2010

Scenes at the 2010 Enkutatashi Festival, which Al co-emceed, at Martin Luther King, Jr. Civic Plaza, Berkeley

Photos: Al Young

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©  Alonzo Young

To view all 260 Enkutatash Berkeley 2010 photographs at Flickr, click here

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© Brett Hall                      © Al Young

Late Summer Night Dreams

Photos: Al Young | Squaw Valley, Berkeley, Palo Alto, California

© Brett Hall

Al Young and Amy Tan at the annual Community of Writers at Squaw Valley mid-week picnic.

Photos courtesy Peet’s Midtown Café, Palo Alto, CA

above | Al Young and poet-translator Darlene Reddaway of Stanford’s Slavic Studies meet to go over Russian versions of Al’s poems that Moscow poet Vadim Mesyats is translating for a three-city conference. Invited by the Moscow Academy of Sciences to tour Helsinki, St. Petersburg and Moscow in mid-September with Russian and other American poets (Michael Palmer among them), Al has opted to video-confer from California. below | Darlene patiently teaches Al the WebEx moves.

Click to enlarge

Official invitation/travel visa issued to Al Young after the Moscow Academy of Sciences invited him to attend a September 2010 poetry and literature conference in the Russian Federation.

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“The fight is never about grapes or lettuce. It is always about people.”
— César Chávez (1927-1993)

left | Screen actor Ian Holm as Greenwich Village poet-bohemian Joe Gould in Stanley Tucci’s Joe Gould’s Secret (2000); right | Joe Gould himself

“In winter I’m a Buddhist;
In summer I’m a nudist.”
— Little Joe Gould (1891-1957)

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© Al Young

Aloe California [hybrid], 2010

© Al Young

Sweet Basil and beyond

© Al Young

Gini’s flower

© Al Young

Summerless young tomatoes

© Al Young

Ed and Helen’s “orchid time”

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© Maria Syndicus

Michael Young and Dad | Palo Alto, July 2010

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Lake Merritt by Al Young

above | Poet Joseph Lease photographed by Al Young
below | Al Young and Joseph Lease — who both teach at California College of the Arts’ MFA Writing Program, San Francisco — meet over coffee at Farley’s East near Lake Merritt, Oakland, August 2010 photographed by Solomon Pope

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© Al Young

Legendary Sons of Champlin guitarist Terry Haggerty and vocalist Danielle Thys perform “Ten Cents a Dance” with the Randy Craig Trio + One at Caffè Trieste, Berkeley, CA

© Robin Haight

Facebook pals Danielle Thys and Al meet face to face in real-time for the first time at Caffè Trieste.

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© Safi wa Nairobi

Writers Marvin X, Tennessee Reed, Conyus, and Al Young | Koret Auditorium, San Francisco, July 2010

Al Young

Following an onstage conversation with producer Justin Desmangles at the San Francisco Library’s Koret Auditorium, the tireless Ishmael Reed signs copies of Barack Obama and the Jim Crow Media; just published in Montréal, Québec by Baraka Books.

© Tennessee Reed

(L-R) Painters Dewey Crumpler and Arthur Monroe; writers Ishmael Reed, Conyus, Marvin X, Al Young

Al Young

Poet Conyus and broadcast journalist, producer and visual artist Safi wa Nairobi

Al Young

Safi wa Nairobi and master painter Arthur Monroe at El Zócalo, Mission District, San Francisco

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Al Young

Photo courtesy La Note Restaurant

For their annual get-together, Al poses again with two luminous former students he taught at UC Santa Cruz and San José State University respectively: Persis Karim (left) and Kate Evans (right), the both of them now prolific writers and treasured professors at San José State.

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Clickable

Photo: Terry Ehret

Al Young delivers Kenneth Rexroth’s “Time Spirals” and his own “For Kenneth and Miriam Patchen” at Diesel Books, Oakland, to celebrate publication of The Place That Inhabits Us: Poems of the San Francisco Bay Watershed (Sixteen Rivers Press) | July 2010

Photo: Sharon Coleman

Writers Ellen Weiss and Jackie Huss Hallerberg suspend their bookstore conversation with Al to huddle for a shot.

© Al Young

Host Richard Silberg of Poetry Flash and editor-writing teacher Sharon Coleman stare into Al’s friendly lens while poet Jackie Huss Hallerberg politely steps aside.

Richard Silberg reads his poem “Sunset” at Diesel Books, 11 July 2010

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Oklahoma Summer Arts Institute 2010

© Al Young

Sun rising over Lake Altus-Lugert at Quartz Mountain, Oklahoma

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Photo © Jill Enfield

OSAI [Oklahoma Summer Arts Institute] Creative Writing Class 2010

Front row, L-R ~ Alison Liu, Kathy Zhou, Katie Duncan, Brooke Bolding, Erin Miller

Second row ~

Mary Alexa Woodard (bending), Renae Perry, Hannah Erb, Kailee Bird West

Back row ~

Al Young, Arthur Dixon, Elizabeth Sholar, Olivia Leigh Branscum, Claire Winfrey, Ross Haley, Margaux Griffith

The 2010 OSAI writing workshop in action at Beverly Badger Memorial Library, where poems and prose-poems were composed on the spot. Student laptops were rigged to block internet access.

Workshop photos © Brooke Bolding

OSAI summer workshop student Elizabeth Sholar test-reads one poem out loud.

Photos: Connor Choates

Two versions of how to look preternaturally cool (or altogether vanish) in 100°F heat on a typical June afternoon at Oklahoma’s Quartz Mountain.

Front row, L-R ~ Alison Liu, Erin Miller, Kathy Zhou, Katie Duncan, Renae Perry

Second row ~ Kailee Bird West, Hannah Erb (leaning), Al Young, Olivia Branscum

Far back row ~ Ross Haley, Claire Winfrey, Mary Alexa Woodard, Elizabeth Sholar, Arthur Dixon

© Mary Woodard

Photo: PC Mack

During a much-needed workshop excursion by bus to nearby Mangum, Oklahoma, Al Young and Creative Writing liaison Margaux Griffith relax outside the Old Greer County Museum & Hall of Fame.

Courtesy Old Greer County Museum & Hall of Fame

Coming across a stash of American flags as the class explores Mangum’s long abandoned Franklin Hotel, Hannah Erb, Kailee Bird West and Margaux Griffith note Oklahoma’s devoted patriotism.

Kathy Zhou and Katie Duncan (below) are off to look at Mangum while Hannah Erb, Olivia Branscum, and the rest of us look around the ruined hotel.

Photos: Al Young

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(top) Trombone instructor Wesley Broadnax, PR assistant Joy Kotey, Al
(bottom) Acting instructor Vincent Dowling, Ballet instructor Giana Jigarhan, Al

Photo: O.O. Gabugah

Al Young in after-hours party mode

Al Young

Violin instructor Misha Galagnov, French horn instructor Charles Gavin, trombonist Wesley Broadnax, Orchestra instructor Chrisian Knapp, Choral liaison Christine Hrubik, Modern Dance liaison Kristie Schaffner, Creative Writing liaison Margaux Griffith — snapped at the close of a morning staff meeting at Sunset Café.

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Page under construction  

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“It’s spring fever. That is what the name of it is. And when you’ve got it, you want — oh, you don’t quite know what it is you do want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so!” — Mark Twain

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© Susan Slapin

“The song a robin sings/Through years of endless springs …” — “Stella By Starlight” (Victor Young & Ned Washington, composers ~ © Sony/ATV Music)

© Susan Slapin

Of this shot with a resplendent Northern Cascades defining all else, Susan Slapin of Orcas Island, WA writes: “I love photography, in case you haven’t noticed. This morning — lots o’ birds here! Seagulls walking on North Beach, on Crescent Beach — herons and Canadian geese.”

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left out in the rain     stone buddha       clad in robe of green

— Gary Gach

The Buddhist Channel

palms joined

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The 2010 PEN-Faulkner Awards
May 6-7, Washington, DC
The Folger Shakespeare Library

click to zoom

Photos by Claire Duggan

From left to right: emcee Gwen Ifill, finalist Lorrie Moore, finalist Lorraine López, finalist Colson Whitehead, judge Kyoko Mori, winner Sherman Alexie, judge Rilla Askew, finalist Barbara Kingsolver, and judge Al Young.  |  Photo courtesy of Claire Duggan

Read the story behind the shot at PEN/Faulkner Foundation.org
View the Folger Shakespeare Library’s photostream at Flickr
Previous announcement of the 2010 PEN/Faulkner Awards for Fiction at AlYoung.org

each title clickable

© Claire Duggan

Sherman Alexie: Winner of the 2010 PEN/Faulkner Fiction Award for War Dances.

© Claire Duggan

Before the awards ceremony begins at Washington, DC’s Folger Shakespeare Library, PEN-Faulkner judge Al Young signs citations he has composed for honored writers Colson Whitehead and Sherman Alexie.
||| Audio clip of Al Young’s citation for War Dances, winner Sherman Alexie‘s “rollicking, bittersweet gem of a book.”

© Claire Duggan

Popular DC dance therapist Kris O’Shea pins the corsage to Al’s lapel while her out-of-frame spouse — novelist Alan Cheuse of NPR book review fame — looks on.

© Claire Duggan

Diane Alexie and authors Sherman Alexie and Lorrie Moore captured in timeless black & white at the 2010 PEN-Faulkner Awards reception.

© Claire Duggan

Renowned broadcast journalist Gwen Ifill and PEN-Faulkner judge and author Rilla Askew meet and greet.

© Claire Duggan

Novelist and judge Kyoko Mori and newly elected PEN-Faulkner president Lisa Page swap pleasantries with two excited guests.

© Claire Duggan

PEN-Faulkner Award judges Kyoko Mori and Al Young who, up until Awards weekend, had only known each other through writings, books, emails and telephone conferences.

© Claire Duggan

The Folger Shakespeare Library dining room.

Colson Whitehead and Sherman Alexie

© Claire Duggan

Novelist-biographer-memoirist Beverly Lowry and daughter Melissa with Al Young at the 2010 PEN-Faulkner Awards.

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page in progress

more photos to follow

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© AlYoung.Org

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Photo: Ray Black

L-R: Poets Camille Dungy, Robert Chrisman, Jayne Cortez, Al Young, Melba Joyce Boyd, Conyus, Arthur Sheridan, and (seated) Adam David Miller — following the 40th anniversary celebration reading for The Black Scholar Journal at the University of California, Berkeley ~ November 2009

© James Kenyon

On a 13-degree Fahrenheit night, poet-playwright Bill Harris and popular poet and arts activist Terry Blackhawk talk weather and shop while the audience gathers at Detroit’s restful, beautiful Virgil H. Carr Cultural Arts Center in December, 2009.

© James Kenyon

Meanwhile, Al Young and a jetlagged Melba Boyd — just back from a teaching stay in Shanghai and visit to San Francisco — complete some unfinished business before the show (A Night of Poetry, Jazz and Blues in Detroit’s Historic Paradise Valley) begins.

© James Kenyon         

The gig begins with Melba Boyd — Detroit born and bred — reading and reciting a suite of exciting home-triggered poems layered with blues-tinged helpings of master bassist Marion Hayden‘s joy.

© James Kenyon        

Populist poet and master of ceremonies M.L. Liebler greets renowned guitarist-poet Ron English who, with Marion Hayden, will collaborate with Al Young, now poised to kick off his set.

© James Kenyon

Nata Morozova, the videographer focusing here on saxophonist Faruq Z. Bey, journeyed to Detroit all the way from Siberia, where Bey — as a member of M.L. Liebler’s Magic Poetry Band — has often performed.

© James Kenyon

After Al Young opens with “The Art of Benny Carter,” his brief poetic tribute to the humanizing majesty of jazz, Ron and Marion slip eloquently into Carter’s classic ballad, “When Lights Are Low.”

© James Kenyon

Like all true artists who work with sound and song, Bill Harris listens as thoughtfully as he speaks or sets pen to paper — or fingers to keyboard.

© James Kenyon

Bill Harris reads from Birth of a Notion; Or, The Half Ain’t Never Been Told, forthcoming from Wayne State University Press.

© James Kenyon

Melba Boyd and Faruq Z. Bey in rapt response to the poetry Bill Harris is voicing.

© Vivian Torrence

December paints North Carolina

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SECTION UNDER CONSTRUCTION

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