Gary Younge

Gary Younge
Gary Younge in c. 2008
Born	1969 (age 46–47)
Occupation	Columnist Author Broadcaster
Subject	Racial politics Left-wing politics
Notable works	No Place Like Home: A Black Briton's Journey Through the American South The Speech: The Story Behind Dr Martin Luther King Jr's Dream
Spouse	Tara Mack
Children	Osceola Zora
Website
@garyyounge on Twitter

Gary Younge (born 1969) is a British journalist, author and broadcaster. He is a feature writer and columnist for The Guardian newspaper and writes a monthly column for The Nation, "Beneath the Radar".

Biography

Gary Younge was born in Hertfordshire to Barbadian parents and grew up in Stevenage.^[1] At the age of 17 he went to teach English in a United Nations Eritrean refugee school in Sudan with the educational charity Project Trust.^[2] In 1984, aged 15, he briefly joined the Young Socialists, the youth section of the Workers Revolutionary Party, but left a year later after harassment from other party members, including allegedly being accused of working for MI5 and claims that he supported Fidel Castro only because of his ethnicity.^[3] In the late 1980s he attended Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, where he studied French and Russian,^[4] and was elected Vice President (Welfare) of the Student Association, a paid sabbatical post he held for a year.^[5]

In his final year of at university he was awarded a bursary from The Guardian to study journalism at City University, and after a short internship at Yorkshire Television he joined The Guardian in 1993, and has since reported from all over Europe, Africa, the US and the Caribbean.^[2]

His book No Place Like Home, in which he retraced the route of the civil rights Freedom Riders, was published in 1999 and was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award.

In 2011, he moved to Chicago, where he lived with his wife Tara Mack, his son Osceola and daughter Zora until returning to Britain in 2015.^[6] He intends to move to Hackney.^[7] His brother Pat Younge is chief creative officer of BBC Vision.^[8]

Awards and honours

• 2007: Honorary Doctorate from Heriot-Watt University.^[9]
• 2007: Honorary doctorate from London South Bank University.^[10]
• 2009: James Cameron award for the "combined moral vision and professional integrity" of his coverage of the Barack Obama election campaign.^[11][12]
• 2015: Foreign Commentator of the Year by The Comment Awards.^[13]
• 2015: David Nyhan Prize for political journalism from Harvard University's Shorenstein Center.^[14]
• 2016: Sandford Award, "for radio, TV and online programmes that reflect religious, spiritual or ethical themes".^[15]

Bibliography

• Younge, Gary (2002). No Place Like Home: A Black Briton's Journey Through the American South. Jackson, Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi. ISBN 9781578064885. OCLC 49226176. 
• Younge, Gary (2006). Stranger in a Strange Land: Encounters in the Disunited States. New York: New Press. ISBN 9781595580689. OCLC 62421357. 
• Younge, Gary (2011). Who Are We-- And Should It Matter in the 21st Century?. New York: Nation Books. ISBN 9781568586601. OCLC 663952482. 
• Younge, Gary (2013). The Speech: The Story Behind Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Dream. Chicago: Haymarket Books. ISBN 9781608463220. OCLC 829740195. 
• Younge, Gary (2016). Another Day in the Death of America: A Chronicle of Ten Short Lives. New York: Nation Books. ISBN 9781568589756. OCLC 945232454. 

References

External links

• Official website
• Column archive at The Guardian
  • Memoirs of a teenage Trot, The Guardian, 19 February 2000
• Column archive at The Nation
• Gary Younge on Twitter
  
• Appearances on C-SPAN
• Works by or about Gary Younge in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Article archive at Journalisted
• Gary Younge at DMOZ