In Book of Hours, Kevin Young’s eighth poetry collection, he marks the tenth anniversary of his father’s sudden and unexpected death in poems that recount the process of bereavement and creates a language of loss while also celebrating life through accounts of the birth of his son.

Winner of the Lenore Marshall Prize from the Academy of American Poets, Book of Hours has been called an “impressively musical exploration of grief and endurance” by Publishers Weekly. In a review for National Public Radio, poet Craig Morgan Teicher calls the collection “a kind of poetic daybook or diary” that seems to say “it’s best … to make equally good friends with grief and hope, in order to survive them.” 

In 2016, Book of Hours was chosen for the National Endowment for the Arts initiative the Big Read.