October in Oregon at Linfield College
Al Young

 

North studio window in October
Al Young

 

Graduating senior Jolene Nieves gives Al Young a late-morning tour of Seton Hill University’s exquisite campus in Greensburg, Pennsylvania during his week-long visit in mid-September 2008.     Al Young

 

 

Michael Arnzen,  fiction writer, poet and Professor of creative writing with Al following a gala Friday night presentation and book-signing reception at the Seton Hill University Theatre.     John Spurlock

 

At Copperfield’s Books in Petaluma, CA, poet Joyce Jenkins — in the musical company of her partner Mark Baldridge, a feeling flautist — reads from Joy Road and other recent work.     Al Young

 

Mark Baldridge and Joyce Jenkins of Poetry Flash renown kick back to listen to Avotcja perform with her blues-koto trio at the Petaluma Poetry Walk 2008.     Al Young

 

Avotcja performing in the outdoor patio of the Bella Luma Caffe at the 2008 Petaluma Poetry Walk (poet-percussionist Avotcja, koto master Shirley Kazuyo Muramoto, and bassist Eugene Warren).      Al Young

 

Poets from every direction: Al Young, Yusef Komunyakaa, and Ishmael Reed (New York City, October 2008 following the Cave Canem Legacy Conversation at The New School).     Rachel Eliza Griffiths

 

Poet-broadcasters Bryan Sanders, Rafael Alvarado, Corrie Greathouse of World Wide Word (Santa Monica College, Pete & Susan Barrett Art Gallery, October 2008)
Bruria Finkel

 

October in full glory at Linfield College (McMinnville, Oregon)
Al Young

 

Visiting Woodrow Wilson Scholar Al Young addresses a Linfield College classroom on the urgency of our times and the healthful role that poetry and artistic creativity play in the human struggle to survive.
© Rachel Palinkas (The Linfield Review)

 

Student writers from Camas, the Linfield College’s literary magazine, gather with Al at Dillin Hall for a late afternoon snack. 

 

At Nick’s Italian Café with my host Fred Ross (Senior Adviser to the President of Linfield College), Cindy Ross, and their daughter Amy Ross.     Photo: Carmen Peirano

 

With Pamela Z, composer/performer/sound artist/extended vocalist extraordinaire, at the 2008 Artful Harvest, an annual auction and dinner orchestrated to fund the Djerassi Resident Artists Program (Woodside, CA).       Photo: Randall Schwabacher

 

Oklahoma Sunset     |     Al Young

 

 

Quartz Mountain Arts & Conference Center:
One lake view (October 2008)  Al Young

 

The Quartz Mountains: Are these rock formations really mountains?   
Al Young

 

Most of my energetic Oklahoma Arts Institute poetry workshop at Quartz Mountain, October 2008 [Names forthcoming]     |     Emily Clinton

 

Bassist Robb Fisher, poet-vocalist Al Young, and drummer Akira Tana in performance at The Jazz School, Berkeley, Halloween night 2008. Our sympathy lay with pianist Susan Muscarella, whose father’s death forced her to cancel the trio-leading engagement she had fondly organized.      Mark Cohen

 

Johnson C. Smith University, an historically Black U.S. university established just after the Civil War.

 

With Professors Glenn Hutchinson (English and Foreign Languages), Kirsten Hemmy (English, Literature, Creative Writing), poet Donald Mager (Dean of Arts and Letters), and Pamela Richardson (Composition, English, African American Literature) in the lobby of the Sarah Belk Gambrell Auditorium, Johnson C. Smith University, November 2008.   |   Jamil Callub 

 

With Dr. Ronald L. Carter, President of Johnson C. Smith University, in his office, November 2008.   |   Donald Mager

 

 To emphasize the power of sense-appealing imagery and metaphor in writing, Al Young reads a student poem to the afternoon workshop aty JCSU, Charlotte.    |    Joshua M. Nypaver

 

Al and Don Mager with the JCSU poetry workshop on a Friday afternoon (Translation: Not everyone was present). Joshua M. Nypaver

Click here to access Flickr for Joshua M. Nypaver’s photostreams of Al Young’s 2008 visit to Johnson C. Smith University

 

 

Two People
Gary Gach, dispatcher |  The Buddhist Channel

 

 

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

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

 

The Look and Feel of Dreams Remembered

 

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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 Portreo Hill 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, Forida

 

With country western 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 the forthcoming collection: Al Young’s America

 

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.

Angel City Press publisher Paddy Calistro with Al Young,
California Library Association Conference & Exhibit, Long Beach, October 2007

 

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Contact the California Summer Reading Program
Natalie Cole, Director