Poet Dean Young was born in Columbia, Pennsylvania, and received his MFA from Indiana University. He has taught at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, the low-residency MFA program at Warren Wilson College, and the University of Texas-Austin. Influenced by the New York School poets, Young often uses the tools of surrealism and collage in his poetry. In an interview with Jubilat, Young spoke of the centrality of misunderstanding in his poetry: “I think to tie meaning too closely to understanding misses the point.”