Poetry: Monica Youn

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Monica Youn’s most recent volume is FROM FROM, a finalist for the 2023 National Book Award. Among her many honors are the Levinson Prize from the Poetry Foundation, the William Carlos Williams Award of the Poetry Society of America, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. An associate professor of English at UC Irvine, she is a former constitutional lawyer, a member of the Racial Imaginary Institute, and a foremost interrogator of what Cathy Park Hong calls “the hidden biases built into the way we speak” and more specifically “the abjection of racial containment.”

Organized and hosted by poet, literary critic, and UCLA Distinguished Research Professor Stephen Yenser. Cosponsored by UCLA Recreation and the UCLA Department of English.

Monica Youn is the author of four poetry collections, most recently FROM FROM, which was a finalist for the 2023 National Book Award. She has been awarded the Levinson Prize from the Poetry Foundation, the William Carlos Williams Award of the Poetry Society of America, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Witter Bynner Fellowship from the Library of Congress, and a Stegner Fellowship. Her previous books have been shortlisted for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Kingsley Tufts Award. A former constitutional lawyer, she is a member of the curatorial collective the Racial Imaginary Institute and is an associate professor of English at UC Irvine.