Monica Youn

Youn’s poetry often explores history, race, and identity through inventive forms and startling metaphor. Her work presses on the limits of language, frequently turning structures of law, power, and myth against themselves to expose their hidden assumptions. Critics have praised her for combining intellectual rigor with lyrical force, creating poems that are both formally exacting and emotionally resonant.

Monica Youn is the author of four poetry collections, most recently From From (Graywolf Press 2023), which was awarded the Anisfield-Wolf Award and was a New York Times Notable Book and Best Poetry Book of 2023, and a Time, NPR, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, and Electric Literature Best Book of 2023. Her books have twice been finalists for the National Book Award, as well as being finalists for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the PEN Voelcker Prize, and the Kingsley Tufts Award. She has also 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 Bytter Fellowship from the Library of Congress, and a Stegner Fellowship. A former constitutional lawyer, she is a professor of English at UC Irvine and is president of the board of Poets House.