The 2009 Orcas Island Writers Festival has come to a close, but the creativity lingers on, as local writers scribble ideas and prose onto their notepads. The four-day event featured workshops in fiction, children’s writing, non-fiction, poetry, and play writing, as well as a musical performance at Orcas Center.

Picture here is Al Young, who gave a lecture on Sept. 19 about poetry and jazz.

Young grew up in the small towns and villages of the rural South, and in urban, industrial Detroit. After college, he emigrated to the San Francisco Bay Area. Settling at first in Berkeley, he held a variety of colorful jobs (folksinger, lab aide, disk jockey, medical photographer, clerk typist, employment counselor) before graduating with honors from U.C. Berkeley with a degree in Spanish. Young has taught poetry, fiction writing and American literature at U.C. Berkeley, U.C. Santa Cruz, U.C. Davis, Bowling Green State University, Foothill College, Colorado College, Rice University, the University of Washington, the University of Michigan, and more.

His honors include Wallace Stegner, Guggenheim, Fulbright and National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, the PEN-Library of Congress Award for Short Fiction, the PEN USA Award for Nonfiction, two American Book Awards, two Pushcart Prizes, two New York Times Notable Book of the year citations, an Arts Council Silicon Valley Fellowship, the Stephen Henderson Achievement Award for Poetry, Radio Pacifica’s KPFA Peace Prize, the Glenna Luschei Distinguished Poetry Fellowship, and the Richard Wright Award for Excellence in Literature. Young’s many books include novels, collections of poetry, essays, memoirs and anthologies.

In 2005 Governor Schwarzenegger appointed him Poet Laureate of California.

During his presentation, he sang, read from some of his books, and spoke about the power of jazz and its connection to poetry.