Jake Adam York

Jake Adam York (1972-2012) was the author of three books of poems—Murder Ballads (2005), winner of the Elixir Prize in Poetry; A Murmuration of Starlings (2008), co-winner of the Crab Orchard Open Competition and winner of the Colorado Book Award; and Persons Unknown (2010), published by Southern Illinois University Press as an editor’s selection in the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry. York was an associate professor at the University of Colorado Denver, and co-edited Copper Nickel. Originally from Alabama, York was educated at Auburn and Cornell. He was also the author of a work of literary criticism, The Architecture of Address: The Monument and Public Speech in American Poetry, published by Routledge in 2005. When he died, he was at work on a critical study of artistic responses to the Civil Rights Movement entitled Monument and Memento, and a new book of poems entitled Abide, which was published posthumously in spring 2014 by Southern Illinois University Press.