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Photo: Eugrne B. Redmond

Poets Eugene B. Redmond and Al Young | Miami, FL 2009

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

A portion of the many pupils gathered at Fairview Elementary School (kindergarten through fifth grade), Denver, patiently waiting to deliver their Black History Month presentations in honor of Al Young, Rachel B. Noel Visiting Distinguished Professor. Moved by their vitality and spirit, Young spoke briefly on the importance of poetry for human survival, then he sang, read and recited poetry.

 

With Norma Jiron, Principal of Fairview Elementary School.

 

Sunday Lunch at the Hyatt Regency with (right to left) Metropolitan State College President Stephen M. Jordan and Mrs. Ruth Jordan, Al Young, and Rachel B. Noel Committee members: Nancy Munser, Ali Thobhani, Myron Anderson, Joan Laura Foster, Joan M.C. Foster (Campus Liaison), Wilton Flemon (Chair), and Rick West.

 

With Charles Batey, Metropolitan State College’s Associate Director of Equal Opportunity. We have just finished lunching with Dr. Luis Torres and other Metro State faculty and staff members at Tamayo, the popular Mexican restaurant in Denver’s fabled Larimer Street, no longer the funky down-and-out stretch that novelist Jack Kerouac immortalized in On the Road.

 

Facing cold reality in the full light of day, directly across the street from where the Democratic Party will hold its 2008 Convention.

 

With Denver Poet Laureate Chris Ransick and Colorado Poet Laureate Mary Crow at luncheon award ceremony hosted by Metro State for more than 300 Rachel B. Noel Middle School 8th graders.

 

Denver in February
Al Young

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Click on the picture-frame to view an old-fashioned photo-collage (assembled by Diem Jones) of Al Young with such friends and acquaintances as Toi Derricotte, Ernest J. Gaines, Lawson Fusao Inada, Wallace Stegner, Nikki Giovanni, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Amiri Baraka, James D. Houston, Jane Hirshfield, Quincy Troupe, blues great Charles Brown, Ishmael Reed, Elmaz Abinader, John Handy, Dana Gioia, and Wynton Marsalis

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The Look and Feel of Dreams Remembered

With Governor Arnold Schwartzenegger, Sacramento, 2006

With novelist and sculptor Barbara Chase-Riboud at the American Academy in Rome, 2004. We hadn’t seen one another since Paris 1992, when she hosted a gala crowd at her atelier to honor that year’s International Conference on Richard Wright at the Sorbonne.

Al wraps up an after-dinner talk on poetry, technology and democracy at the American Academy in Rome.

Rome in rain, Spring 2004 |   Al Young

Side street, Naples, 2004
Al Young

Gemini in Naples, 2004 |  Al Young

Signage, Cagliari, Italy 2004 | Al Young

Two Paolas: Paola Pierini and Paola Boi in Cagliari (Casteddu in the Sardinian language), 2004
Al Young

Coastal restaurant, Cagliari
Al Young

Morning by the sea with Paola Pierini.

Dinner in Cagliari, 2004

Scholar Radhouan Ben Amara (co-editor and husband to Paola Boi), Paola Pierini of the U.S. Embassy, Rome, and Professor of English and African Americanist Paola Boi. Yet another lovely meal with caring friends.

Salerno snack | Al Young

With author Mei Nakano at Santa Rosa Junior College, 2004

Al “Hassan” Wardlow at his Mission District digs in San Francisco. The former Sun Ra and salsa band trombonist had just flown in hours before from his residence in Guangzhou, China to play the gig with me at Santa Rosa Junior College. Zooming home from Italy, I’d barely beaten my old high school buddy back home to our beloved Bay Area.
Al Young

Poet and former Howard University professor Sam Hamod at the San Francisco Book Fair and University of Poetry, 2004 | Al Young

With Sonia Sanchez at the SF Tenderloin Book Fair and University of Poetry

Sonia Sanchez inset photo: Indigo Moor

With Amiri Baraka at the SF Tenderloin Book Fair and University of Poetry

With former student Chittra Divakaruni at the 20o5 Sun Coast Writers Conference, St. Petersburg, Florida

With Nashville songwriter Rick Carnes at 2005 Sun Coast Conference

With Norman Mailer (1923-2007) at Sun Coast Writers Conference

Things about to disappear | Al Young

Sharon Doubiago, Carolyn Forché, Al Young relaxing at Split Rock; Duluth, MN 1994
Original photo: Harry Mattison | Re-take: Al Young (Courtesy of Sharon Doubiago); postcard preview from Al Young’s America, a forthcoming collection.

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Watch the 2007 Friday Night Follies at Squaw Valley Community of Writers

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While Caridwen Spatz and Mark (Crazy in Alabama) Childress drain their hearts into Hank Williams‘ “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” novelist and bassist James D. Houston chokes back tears. Off camera, Gregory Spatz, Caridwen’s writer-fiddler husband, is probably tearful, too.

Al Young and Jim Houston (the only two members of their Granite Chief Quartet who ever bother to show up for gigs) re-enact the back-story to Louis Jordan‘s perennially popular “Is You Is, Or Is You Ain’t My Baby?”

Now Al and Jim chomp down hard on the bittersweet nougat of this bluesy lament. Just about to blow some blues on the edge of his his credit card, Al sings: “I’m gonna walk up to her gate/And see if we can’t get it straight./’Cause I love her,/I’m gonna ask her … “
Photos: Cynthia Christian

Barbara Hall asks Al what he’s been up to since the Governor appointed him California Poet Laureate. Al listens for a hint. That’s husband Oakley Hall (1920-2008) at the left in shorts with his back to us.
Photo: Brett Hall Jones

Swann Li, a writing student from China, and workshop leader Al Young during the August 2007 Community of Writers at Squaw Valley fiction week in the Sierras. Above them hangs a gallery of writers photographed by Barbara Hall.