Kevin Young is widely regarded as one of the leading poets of his generation, one who find meaning and inspiration in African-American music and the history of Black America. Young is Atticus Haygood Professor of Creative Writing and English and Curator of Literary Collections and the Danowski Poetry Library at Emory University. His work has been featured on National Public Radio and in The New Yorker, Ploughshares, Kenyon Review, Callaloo and other journals and anthologies.

He has written six books of poems and edited four others. His newest book is "Dear Darkness," published by Knopf in 2008.  Young has received fellowships Stanford University, the Guggenheim Foundation, the MacDowell Colony and the National Endowment for the Arts.

He has won the Paterson Poetry Prize for Sustained Literary Achievement, the Quill Award for Poetry, the National Poetry Series and the John C. Zacharis First Book Prize of Ploughshares magazine and the Paterson Poetry Prize. He has been a finalist for both the National Book Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Award. Young will read on Wednesday, Nov. 4 at 7 p.m. in the Smith Recital Hall at the Silver Center for the Arts on Main Street in Plymouth. A reception and book signing follow the reading.

The next reader in the series will be Galway Kinnell, March 31 at 7 p.m. The Eagle Pond Authors' series is named for former New Hampshire and U.S. Poet Laureate Donald Hall's ancestral home in Wilmot. Hall is cofounder of the series, which is presented by the Silver Center and supported by a generous grant from the Plymouth State University Bookstore and Follett Higher Education Group.