New York Times: The Poet Kevin Young Is Named New Director of Schomburg Center [for Research in Black Culture in Harlem, a division of the New York Public Library]

Kevin Young, a professor of English and creative writing and a curator of rare books and archives at Emory University. Credit Melanie Dunea/CPi 

The New York Times 

By JENNIFER SCHUESSLER  AUG. 1, 2016

The poet and scholar Kevin Young has been named director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem, a division of the New York Public Library and a leading repository for archival materials relating to African and African-American life, history and culture.

Mr. Young, a professor of English and creative writing and a curator of rare books and archives at Emory University, will take up the position in late fall. He succeeds the historian Khalil Gibran Muhammad, who left to become a professor at Harvard.

Mr. Young, 45, is the author of 11 books, including “Blue Laws: Selected and Uncollected Poems, 1995-2015” and “The Grey Album: On the Blackness of Blackness,” which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism. At Emory he helped spearhead a number of major acquisitions, including archives of Jack Kerouac, and Flannery O’Connor and Lucille Clifton.

“Kevin Young is one of the country’s most distinguished curators and writers,” William Kelly, the New York Public Library’s director of research libraries, said in a statement. “We’re delighted to welcome him.”

The Schomburg Center was named for the Puerto Rican-born black scholar and collector Arturo Schomburg, whose vast personal library it bought in 1926. During Dr. Muhammad’s five-year tenure it saw a 34 percent increase in attendance, according to the library, and created a new center for the study of trans-Atlantic slavery, among other initiatives.

Retweeted
By Harry Williams (@HarryWiliams1)