[2] Writing featured in her life from childhood, when she wrote and illustrated a series of small books, started a magazine, created her own bedroom library,[3][4] and (with her brothers) made movies with a borrowed video camera.
[7][5] She lists some of her favourite New Zealand writers and poets as Pip Adam, Hera Lindsay Bird, James Brown, Jenny Bornholdt, Geoff Cochrane and Bill Manhire, as well as newer voices such as Sam Duckor-Jones and Tayi Tibble.
In 2009, Young was awarded an MA in creative writing from the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University of Wellington.
In 2015 she was a finalist for the Sarah Broom Poetry Prize[12] and she was one of the winners of the 2016 Surrey Hotel Steve Braunias Memorial Writers Residency in Association with The Spinoff Award.
[5] Her poetry and essays have been widely published in print and online journals, including Tell You What: Great New Zealand Nonfiction, Five Dials (UK) and The Griffith Review (Australia).
[15] The book won the 2017 Windham-Campbell Prize from Yale University,[16][17] and was described by the judges as "honest, insightful prose" that "offers intimate and playful glimpses of coming of age in small-town New Zealand".