Gary Young is a poet and artist whose many honors include recognition from the Poetry Society of America; he received the Lucille Medwick Memorial Award (2013), the Shelley Memorial Award (2009), the William Carlos Williams Award (2003), and the Lyric Poem Award (2001). He is the recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, National Endowment for the Arts, California Arts Council, and the Vogelstein Foundation among others. He was the Santa Cruz County Artist of the Year (2012) and the first Poet Laureate of Santa Cruz County (2010-2011). He has also received numerous prizes including a Pushcart Prize, and various fellowships and residencies.
Gary is the author of several collections of poetry, most recently That’s What I Thought (2018), the 2017 Lexi Rudnitsky Editor’s Choice Award from Persea Books, and Precious Mirror (2018), translations of the calligraphy and poems of Kobun Chino Ottawa Roshi, from White Pine Press. His collections of poetry include Even So: New and Selected Poems (2012); Pleasure (2006); No Other Life (2002), winner of the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America; Braver Deeds (1999), winner of the Peregrine Smith Poetry Prize; Days (1997); The Dream of a Moral Life (1990), winner of the James D. Phelan Award; Hands (1979); numerous chapbooks, and his poems have appeared in over one hundred anthologies. He co-edited the critical anthologies One for the Money: The Sentence as a Poetic Form (2012); Bear Flag Republic: Prose Poems and Poetics from California (2008); and The Geography of Home: California’s Poetry of Place (1999).
Gary is the editor and publisher of Greenhouse Review Press. Since 1975, he has designed, illustrated, and printed limited edition books, letterpress broadsides, and poetry and trade publications. Gary has produced a series of artist’s books, most notably My Place Here Below; My Brother’s in Wyoming; Nine Days: New York; and A Throw of the Dice. His print work is represented in numerous collections including the Museum of Modern Art, the Victoria and Albert Museum, The Getty Center for the Arts, and special collection libraries throughout the country. His book illustrations, in addition to those included in Greenhouse Review Press publications, include GOETHE: the Complete Works in 12 Volumes, from Princeton University Press, and Alturas de Macchu Picchu/Heights of Macchu Picchu, from Stephen F. Austin University Press.
Gary teaches Creative Writing, and directs the Cowell Press at the University of California, Santa Cruz.