Lawyer and Poet Monica Youn Opens 2018 For Midwest Poets Series

Youn earned a law degree at Yale Law School, and, as a Brennan Center Constitutional Fellow at NYU School of Law, she focused on First Amendment rights and election law. Throughout her career, she has testified before Congress and appeared on MSNBC’s Hardball, PBS’ NewsHour, Bill Moyers Journal and other programs.

Poet and critics Linda Gregerson says “Monica Youn, quite simply, is one of the two or three most brilliant poets working in America today.”

Youn’s Blackacre (Graywolf Press, 2016) won the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America, was a finalist for the Nation Book Critics Circle Award and the PEN Open Book Award, was longlisted for the National Book Award, and named one of the best poetry collections of the year by The New York Times, The Washington Post, and BuzzFeed.