Authors@Google: Al Young January 5, 2009

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Poet Al Young visits Google's Mountain View, CA headquarters to discuss his book "Something About the Blues." This event took place on December 4, 2008, as part of the Authors@Google series.

Like Harlem renaissance poet Langston Hughes, who first popularized the blues as a poetic form, Al Young has written about the blues, played the blues and drawn inspiration from the blues. Something About the Blues uses the blues as a theme throughout 100 new and previously-published poems. Selections evoke the cold, hard city, love gone wrong and blues music itself, with tributes to Ma Rainey, Lena Horne and other notable performers.

California Poet Laureate Al Young is also a novelist and essayist. He is the recipient of NEA, Guggenheim, and Fulbright Fellowships, plus awards for fiction and nonfiction. A popular reader and performer, Young lectures worldwide on literature, music, creativity, the arts, and African American culture. Young lives in Berkeley, California.

More information at http://alyoung.org.