About Stark Young

Stark YoungStark Young (1881-1963), a Mississippian who became.a versatile figure in the Southern Literary Renaissance, devoted his life entirely to the arts and achieved widespread recognition for his contributions as teacher, poet, playwright, director, drama critic, fiction writer, essayist, translator, and painter. Young was born in Como and lived there until his family moved to Oxford in 1895. After receiving degrees from the University of Mississippi (B.A., 1901) and Columbia University (M.A., 1902), he taught at the University of Mississippi (1905-1907), the University of Texas (1907-1915), and Amherst College (1915-1921). After moving to New York City in 1921 to work a freelance writer, he became drama critic for the New Republic and a member of its editorial board as well as that of Theatre Arts. Young’s essays for the New Republic and Theatre Arts, later collected in  five books on  the theatre, established him as a leading drama critic in the country. Young also wrote and directed plays, translated Chekhov, and published poetry, an autobiography, and four highly successful novels, including So Red the Rose, which became a bestseller and was made into a popular film. Young painted flowers and landscapes and had two ctitically acclaimed one-man exhibitions in New York.