North studio window in summer |   Al Young

Playwright-publicist Kim McMillon, poet-bandleader Avotcja, Al Young at Bacheeso’s, Berkeley, August 2008

Al in the Bronx outside Teatro Pregones moments before the Lincoln Center La Casita performance begins, August 2008

Janet Coleman, WBAI‘s Arts Director, August 2008 | Al Young

Janet Coleman and husband David Dozer fast at work, WBAI New York, 2008
Al Young

Outside Janet Coleman’s WBAI Wall Street office window overlooking the East River and the Brooklyn Bridge
Al Young

Al, Janet Coleman, David Dozer at WBAI, New York, August 2008

Dred Scott Keyes, WBAI production engineer, New York 2008
Al Young

Mexico’s popular poet Francisco Hernández and  producer Claudia Norman on the steps of Teatro Pregones, Lincoln Center La Casita Festival,The Bronx 2008
Al Young

Three drummers and singers from Pipestone, the award-winning, Minnesota-based troupe of performers of traditional and contemporary Ojibwe song and poetry and dance (Lincoln Center La Casita Festival, New York City 2008)
Al Young

Books by Oakley Hall stacked atop one another as faculty member after faculty member read passages from them during an early August 2008 tribute to the late novelist-teacher and co-founder of the Squaw Valley Community of Writers
Al Young

From the manuscript of a new memoir — partially devoted to her experiences with émigré Arab women in France  — novelist-essayist-screenwriter Diane Johnson reads during the annual Squaw Valley Community of Writers Conference, August 2008
Al Young

Novelist Louis B. Jones and novelist-tap dancer Rhoda Huffey in rapt discussion on the deck of the popular Olympic Plaza, high in the Sierras, Squaw Valley, August 2008
Al Young

Milo Robbins, Dan Robbins, Kate Robbins at Burning Cat Recording Studio, Santa Cruz, CA, August 2008
Al Young

Bard on BART with Bird and Ella, San Francisco, July 2008

Cecil Brown and Randi’s cat Bianca with carrot juice | Al Young

Winners of Alameda, California’s Jewel By the Bay Poetry Contest gather at Jackson Park, 19 July 2008: Mary Loughran, first prize (center right); Alameda poet laureate Mary Rudge, honorable mention (left); Patricia Edith, Frank Bette Center for the Arts‘ literary arts director (center left); Al Young, 2008 contest judge (right) | Photo: George Rowan, Jr.

Patricia Edith in Alameda’s Jackson Park reads from The Commute, her poetry collection. | Al Young

Al with old pal Peg O’Donnell of Chelsea Green Publishing at American Library Association, Anaheim 2008

At the Sourcebooks, Inc. booth, Al signs copies of Something About the Blues: An Unlikely Collection of Poetry, ALA (American Library Association) 2008 | Melanie Thompson

Drummer Jaimeo Brown in live performance, Jazz at Pearl’s, North Beach, San Francisco (across the street from City Lights Books), 20 July 2008. Jaimeo and his quartet were joined onstage by his mom and dad — saxophonist-flautist Marcia Miget and singing bassist-guitarist Dartanyan Brown — along with California poet laureate Al Young

Photo: Al Young

A photo recap of the California poet laureate’s June 14th visit to Sonoma State University, where he addressed Roshni Rustomji‘s New College M.A. Seminar on the Humanities and Leadership. Al Young’s topic: The Poet and Leadership.

 

 

Roshni’s MA Seminar in Humanities and Leadership at year’s end: (standing) Gary, Paul, Beth, Roshni, Tori Jacobs; (seated) Pam, Sheila, Emmanuel | Al Young

 

Emmanuel’s recital with dancer | Al Young

 

Friends and family swell and energize the Saturday afternoon audience for Emmanuel’s recital on jazz and vocalists Ella Fitzgerald, Nina Simone and Natalie Cole. | Al Young

 

Sheila Norman | Al Young

 

Tori Jacobs | Al Young

 

Roshni Rustomji | Al Young

 

Soulmates: Charles Kerns and Roshni Rustomji Kerns | Al Young

 

Al with poet-professor and passionate performance artist Genny Lim
Sheila Norman

 

Roshni and Al at Khana Peena, Indian Cusine, Berkeley
Charles Kerns

Vivian Torrence

Wendy Rockett

 

With other friends of Reginald Lockett, screenwriter Karen Folger Jacobs and Al wait their turn at KPFA Berkeley to pay tribute to the late poet on Living Room, Kris Welch’s popular noontime show, 30 May 2008
Raymond Nat Turner

 

New Orleans, 2008 | Al Young

 

California high school student recipients of Poetry Out Loud awards and citations gather with their judges and producers in Sacramento, April 2008
Mary Beth Barber

 

Gospel Brunch, United Methodist Church, San Luis Obispo, 2008
Al Young

 

Glenna Luschei, Al, Nancy Giles, Pastor Jane Voights
United Methodist Church, San Luis Obispo, Easter Sunday, 2008
Bill Horton

Guitarist Maxwell Gualtieri, poet-teacher-producer Gwendolyn Alley, and trmpeter Louis Lopez following our evening of poetry, jazz and song for Ventura College, April 2008

 

With Cozetta Guin, California History Center, De Anza College, May 2008

 

Tom Izu, Director of the California History Center, and distinguished educator Ulysses Pichon, De Anza College, 2008
Al Young

 

Hanging with noir mystery writer Jim Nisbet at the Friends of the San Francisco Library Laureates Dinner, April 2008

 

Writers photographed at the Friends of the San Francisco Library‘s “Noir in the City” Laureates Dinner, April 2008
[Names and photographer credit forthcoming]

 

Joyce Jenkins, Mark Baldridge, Lorna Dee Cervantes, Al, Floyd Salas, Claire Ortalda, Eileen Malone, James LeCuyer and unidentifed Bulldogs T-shirter. Photographed at the Northern California Independent Booksellers Awards (13 April 2008), the Sunday they honored Al Young with the Fred Cody Lifetime Achievement Award at San Francisco Public Library’s Koret Auditorium.

 

French Quarter, New Orleans, 2008 | PC Mack

 

With popular poet and Times-Picayune columnist Jarvis Deberry at the Tennessee Williams Festival, New Orleans, 2008, where DeBerry and Al Young conversed on-stage about life, art, craft, personal history, and vision.

 

Hurricane Katrina shop window poster display, French Quarter, New Orleans, 2008 | Al Young

 

On the set at Post Modern Group Studios in Irvine, CA with Sam Reece, producer and director of The Paul Laurence Dunbar Collection, a forthcoming PBS-length documentary honoring the life and work of the enduring 19th century African American poet. Al narrates the film and reads some of Dunbar’s poems on-screen. The cast includes Nikki Giovanni, Ishmael Reed, Amiri Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, Mitch Capel, Charlotte Blake Alston, and Awele Makeba. 

Spring at Sea Ranch on the California Coast | Al Young

 

Adam David Miller and Al Young, respective recipients of Upsurge’s first and second Annual Bay Area Jazz/Poetry Festival Recognition Award for sustained excellence in art and community service. | Zigi Lowenberg

 

Zigi Lowenberg and Raymond Nat Turner, co-founders of Upsurge Jazz
Al Young

 

Saint Al of UCLA | Wendy Rockett

………………………………………
Visit painter & storyteller J. Michael Walker’s
ALL THE SAINTS OF THE CITY OF THE ANGELS
Official Web Site

Heyday Books publisher Malcolm Margolin and Wendy Rockett, Heyday’s director of marketing and publicity, pause to pose with Al at the 2008 L.A. Times Festival of Books on a globally heated UCLA afternoon.

 

Patty Milich, California Arts Council’s public awareness coordinator, takes orders for My California: Journeys by Great Writers, a popular and outstanding collection of memoirs and essays. Sales directly benefit the Arts Council whose state funding was slashed by 96% in 2003. | Al Young

 

With William Minor, poet, novelist, essayist, pianist and author of Monterey Jazz Festival: Forty Legendary Years. Bill’s other books include Unzipped Souls: Jazz Journey Through the Soviet Union, Jazz Journeys Through Japan: The Heart Within, Some Grand Dust, and the comic novel Trek: Lips, Sunny, Pecker & Me
Photo: Jim Schneeweis (Angel City Press)

 

Poet Jill Bialosky, W.W.Norton editor and moderator of “Rhyme and Reason,” a Los Angeles Times Festival of Books panel that featured former U.S. poet laureate Robert Pinsky, poet-translator James Ragan and Al Young.

 

James Ragan — poet, screenwriter, translator, and reader extraordinaire — holds his L.A. Times Festival of Books audience spellbound during his performance at UCLA’s Poetry Stage. Ragan commits his work to memory, which is, he says, the way he revises. | Al Young

 

Novelist and poet Joyce Carol Thomas and Eileen Callahan commiserate at the memorial service for author-publisher Bob Callahan held at Anna’s Jazz Island, Berkeley, February 2008 | Al Young

 

Carla Blank, Spain Rodríguez, Ishmael Reed, Joyce Carol Thomas, Gary Gach pause to pose at the Bob Callahan memorial, Berkeley 2008
Al Young

 

Culver Hotel, Culver City, CA | Al Young

 

With Ivry and Cynthia Pride Glamore, L.A. cousins, lunching at Pacifico in Culver City, April 2008

 

Cousin Cynthia Pride Glamore

 

With poet-novelist-essayist Morton J. Marcus at the gala debut of Striking Through the Masks, his time-stopping memoir, Santa Cruz, March 2008 | Peter McGettigan

 

“The sea, the sky, and you, and I — we’re all blues …” | PC Mack

 

Just outside Gualala
O.O. Gabugah

 

Savoring morning sea air, bassist Dan Robbins measures and scores the sky’s mood | Al Young

 

Al Young

 

Sleepy Train at Sunset
Al Young

 

Jane Hirshfield and Al Young at Books Inc, San Francisco, April 2008
Photos: Katherine Hastings

 

Ishmael Reed at piano
Photo: Al Young

 

Al at Cal Arts, July 2006

 

Scene on the river: Kerala, India 2005 | Christopher Wurst

 

Al on the river: Kerala, India 2005 | Christopher Wurst

 

Songster-guitarist Marc Silber and Taj Mahal at Saul’s Deli, Berkeley, Christmas Eve 2007
Carl Martineau

 

National Book Award poet Robert Hass and Sedge Thompson in ardent conversation on West Coast Live! from San Francisco, December 2007
Al Young

 

Robert Hass and Sedge Thompson following a broadcast of West Coast Live! from Piedmont Piano, San Francisco 2007 | Kathi Kamen Goldmark

Stanford classics lecturer Patrick Hunt and philanthropist Helen Bing, Stanford Faculty Club 2007

 

Biographer Diane Wood Middlebrook (1939-2007) at the 2005 National Book Awards, New York City
Miriam Berkeley

 

Black Classics Press founder W. Paul Coates and novelist Walter Moseley, New York 2005

 

With Aunt Doris, Detroit 2007

 

Aunt Mae, Detroit 2007

 

Carol Harris and Melba Joyce Boyd at the Detroit Institute of Arts 2007

 

With poet-critic-novelist-playwright Bill Harris, Detroit 2007

 

Poet Naomi Shihab Nye, fellow National Book Awards judge for poetry, Greenwich Village 2005

 

Poet and National Book Awards judge chair Michael Waters, Greenwich Village 2004

 

San Francisco’s KALW host Alan Farley interviews Al, December 2007
Al Young

 

devorah major, former poet laureate of San Francisco, at KALW in 2007
Al Young

 

Novelist-essayist-folklorist Cecil Brown describes a new project for 2008
Al Young

 

With California State Librarian Susan Hildreth at the 2006 California Library Association Conference, Sacramento

 

With Lemlem Rijio, general manager of Pacifica Radio’s KPFA, on acceptance of the KPFA Peace Award, December 2006

 

An emotional Sunday morning performance with bassist Dan Robbins at the Brown Trout Gallery & Café in historic Dunsmuir, CA, April 2007

 

With New Orleans poet and Bob Kaufman biographer Mona Lisa Saloy, Marcus Books, Oakland 2006

 

Poets Conyus and Glenda Ewing meet at Marcus Books, 2006 | Al Young

 

Voting rights activist Emma Cheuse and her father, novelist and NPR broadcaster Alan Cheuse, swap jokes at a house party hosted by novelist Susan Richards Shreve and literary agent Timothy Seldes, Washington DC, 2006 | Al Young

 

The suave, effervescent novelist and raconteur Nicholas Delbanco, Washington, DC 2006 | Al Young

 

Pulitzer Prize journalist Clarence Page, Washington, DC 2006 | Al Young

 

Al Young with PEN/Faulkner administrator Jamilla Coleman, popular DC high school teacher Frazier O’Leary, and PEN/Faulkner board member Lisa Page | Run-up to the PEN/Faulkner benefit reading with Nicholas Delbanco at Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC, November 2006

 

Michael Young and Dad holding a rare handmade poster for an early 1950′s poetry reading by Langston Hughes sponsored by the Palo Alto-Stanford NAACP; photographed Christmas 2007 | Arline Young

 

Reading with the Suezenne Fordham Chamber Jazz Ensemble in South Pasadena, 2007

 

Featured speaker at International House annual celebration, UC Berkeley, Winter 2007 | Evangeline Canonizado Buell

 

With Rhae Lynn Barnes and Jonathan Lewis of Berkeley Poetry Review following the 2007 Escape from New York Pizza benefit reading in San Francisco with poet-novelist Mary Mackey for Poetry After the Storm. In the wake of Katrina, New Orleans public libraries, like its public schools, are being left to die. Working at first with UC’s NAACP, Berkeley Poetry Review continues to organize benefit readings to help neglected libraries in the Big Easy. | Mary Mackey

Mary Mackey

 

Poet Colleen McElroy reads from Sleeping with the Moon at Marcus Books, December 2007
Al Young

 

With Colleen McElroy, Oakland 2007
Jack Foley

 

Al and Jack Foley confer at KPFA, Berkeley 2007
Adelle Foley

 

Photographer Charles L. Robinson and Al Young, co-authors of Jazz Idiom: Blueprints, Stills and Frames, forthcoming from Heyday Books
Joseph Robinson

 

With poet-memoirist Adam David Miller at California’s Livermore Arts Center, 2007

 

At the end of a passionate night of performances to kick off the 2008 WordTemple Reading Series at Copperfield’s Books (Santa Rosa, CA), poets Beatriz Lagos, Al Young, Reginald Lockett, Katherine Hastings, Brian Auerbach, q.r. hand, jr., and Lewis Jordan gather for a roundup shot on the first of February, Langston Hughes’ Birthday.
Photo: C.J. Rayhill

 

Al signs copies of Something About the Blues: An Unlikely Collection of Poetry.
Photo: C.J. Rayhill