Asha Carolyn Young

Asha Carolyn Young was born in Chiang Mai, Thailand, to American parents. For her seventh birthday, her father gave her an oil painting kit and cautioned, "Just don't eat anything." Her first focused art study as a teenager was with a Chinese brush painting master when her family resided in Vientiane, Laos. During fourteen years of living in the East Bay and four years in San Francisco, Young wrote and taught. Serving as staff and grant writer, she worked with grassroots, Southeast Asian...See more

Asha Carolyn Young was born in Chiang Mai, Thailand, to American parents. For her seventh birthday, her father gave her an oil painting kit and cautioned, "Just don't eat anything." Her first focused art study as a teenager was with a Chinese brush painting master when her family resided in Vientiane, Laos. During fourteen years of living in the East Bay and four years in San Francisco, Young wrote and taught. Serving as staff and grant writer, she worked with grassroots, Southeast Asian refugee agencies in the San Francisco Bay Area. She taught English as a second language for Berkeley, Oakland, and Alameda adult schools; she worked as a freelance teacher, writer, and editor in the Bay Area. She also worked as a bookseller for Cody's Books. In 2011, Young became caretaker of paintings created by her close friend, the late Hari E. Thomas. In 2015, she published a book about him and his paintings, Carry Your Own Joy: The Abstract Paintings and Life of Hari E. Thomas, A San Francisco Artist. Young holds degrees in History (B.A., University of California, Los Angeles) and Cultural Anthropology (M.A., University of California, Berkeley). She studied art at Laney College in Oakland, and she undertook five years of private group study with Japanese brush painting master, Kayoko Bird, in Berkeley. She has been recipient of the Robert Lowie Fund Grant (UCB), Graduate Humanities Research Grant (UCB), President's Undergraduate Fellowship for Research (UCLA), and the Justin Turner Award for History (UCLA). Young lives with her husband, Ron McMath, and their pet family in Northern California. See less