Yardbird Reader News Today

Over the years, Alison Mills Newman has become disillusioned with her work of experimental fiction. Its story is now caught between radical aesthetics and conservative politics.

Al Young, a Berkeley resident and the 2005 California poet laureate. Credit: Michael Young Al Young, a nationally renowned novelist, essayist, screenwriter, professor and poet whom Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed as the state poet laureate in 2005, died April 17, two years after suffering a major stroke. He was 81. Young, a long-time Berkeley resident whose deep, melodic voice was as smooth as the blues music he adored, saw his work become a permanent feature in the city’s landscape. His...