Carol Young is a Chinese American writer born in San Antonio, Texas — where her mother also was born and raised and where her maternal grandparents immigrated from China in the early 1900’s. Her paternal grandmother was born and raised in New York Chinatown where she lived as a single mother after her husband died suddenly leaving her to raise four young sons — all who served in branches of the United States Armed Forces in World War II.   

As a young girl, Carol would sit on a metal milk box on the front step to her house drawing and painting which led her to pursue an undergraduate degree in art. In her senior year, she left the department and finished with a B.A. in Legal Studies, then later completed an M.Ed in Counseling. She was employed for a brief time in higher education but remained connected to the arts and has spent the bulk of her working life in the music business, most notably, co-founding a music management company, establishing an independent concert production company, then later working in event production for Festival Productions’ George Wein, Bob Jones, and Quint Davis on events such as the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and the Newport Folk Festival.  

An avid reader and drawn to poetry, Carol came to writing late in life. Her work may be found in Radar Poetry, West Trestle Review,  SWWIM Every Day!, and The New York Times. She is a 2025 Finalist for The Plentitudes Prize for Poetry. A graduate of the MFA in Writing program at Pacific University (where she met her mentors Kwame Dawes and Frank X. Gaspar), Carol is also an Anaphora Arts Fellow and a Kwame Dawes Mapmakers Scholar. With her husband and daughter a loving constant, when she is not writing she tries to throw pots on the wheel, takes photos with her phone, and visits art exhibits whenever she can.  

(And lastly, she does not usually refer to herself in the third person).