Settling at first in Berkeley, California, he held a wide variety of jobs (including folksinger, lab aide, disk jockey, medical photographer, clerk typist, employment counselor).

][citation needed] From 1969 to 1976, he was Edward B. Jones Lecturer in Creative Writing at Stanford University near Palo Alto, where he lived and worked for three decades.

In the fall of 2003, as the first Coffey Visiting professor of Creative Writing at Appalachian State University in Boone, NC, he taught a poetry workshop.

[13] He twice received the American Book Award, for Bodies and Soul: Musical Memoirs (1982),[9] and The Sound of Dreams Remembered: Poems 1990–2000 (2002).

[5] In the 1980s and 1990s, as a cultural ambassador for the United States Information Agency, he traveled throughout South Asia, Egypt, Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian West Bank.

In 2001, he traveled to the Persian Gulf to lecture on American and African-American literature and culture in Kuwait and in Bahrain for the U.S. Department of State.

His poetry and prose have been translated into Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Norwegian, Serbo-Croatian, Polish, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, German, Urdu, Korean, and other languages.

"[14] Muriel Johnson, Director of the California Arts Council declared: "Like jazz, Al Young is an original American voice.