Dean Young

In 2011, Young had a heart transplant. The possibility of his death and encounters with impermanence are frequent themes in his poetry, especially in Fall Higher, which was published days after his transplant.

In 2008, Young became the William Livingston Chair of Poetry of the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin.

Elegy on Toy Piano (2005), was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.

He was awarded the Colorado Prize for Poetry for Strike Anywhere, has received a Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University, and has been awarded fellowships by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (2002) as well as from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center. His work has been included in The Best American Poetry anthology multiple times, dating back to 1993.

Dean Young (born 1955) is a contemporary American poet in the poetic lineage of John Ashbery, Frank O'Hara, and Kenneth Koch. Often cited as a second-generation New York School poet, Young also derives influence and inspiration from the work of André Breton, Paul Éluard, and the other French Surrealist poets.