Jake Adam York
| Jake Adam York | |
|---|---|
York reading one of his poems in March 2007.
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| Born |
August 10, 1972 West Palm Beach, Florida, U.S. |
| Died | December 16, 2012 (aged 40) Denver, Colorado, U.S. |
| Occupation | Poet, professor, editor |
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater | BA, Auburn University, MA, Ph.D. Cornell University |
| Genre | Poetry |
| Notable awards | Elixir Prize in Poetry 2005 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry Open Competition Awards 2007 Colorado Book Award 2008 National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship 2012 Witter Bynner Fellowship 2014 |
| Spouse | Sarah Skeen |
| Website | |
| www |
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Jake Adam York (August 10, 1972 – December 16, 2012) was an American poet. He published three books of poetry before his death: Murder Ballads, which won the 2005 Elixir Prize in Poetry; A Murmuration of Starlings, which won the 2008 Colorado Book Award in Poetry; and Persons Unknown, an editor's selection in the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry. A fourth book, Abide, was released posthumously, in 2014. That same year he was also named a posthumous recipient of the Witter Bynner Fellowship by the U.S. Poet Laureate.
York was born in West Palm Beach, Florida, in 1972 to David and Linda York, who worked respectively as a steelworker and history teacher. Shortly after York's birth he and his parents moved back to Alabama, where five generations of York's family had lived.
York spent the rest of his youth in Gadsden, Alabama, where he lived in a rural house and shared a bedroom with his brother, Joe. York was a big fan of rap music, including LL Cool J and Run DMC, and covered his bedroom in posters of his favorite rappers.
York graduated from Southside High School in Gadsden in 1990 and that year started at Auburn University, where he eventually earned a B.A. in English. He then received his M.F.A. and Ph.D. in creative writing and English literature from Cornell University.
York worked as an associate professor at the University of Colorado Denver, where he was an editor for "Copper Nickel", a nationally recognized student literary journal he also helped found. In the spring of 2011, York was the Richard B. Thomas Visiting Professor of Creative Writing at Kenyon College. During the 2011–2012 academic year, he was a visiting faculty scholar at Emory University's James Weldon Johnson Institute for the Study of Race and Difference.
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