Young was born in Woodfin, North Carolina, near Asheville, the youngest of 13 children. His mother was Rheba Maphry Tipton Young. His father, Robert, died in 1958. He edited his high school newspaper and earned a scholarship to University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1959. He graduated in 1994.

Dropping out of UNC, Young worked several jobs. He worked as part of Richardson Preyer's failed gubernatorial campaign in 1964, and joined the Army Reserves in 1966. He then went to work for United Press International in 1967.

Young took an assignment with UPI in Vietnam, arriving in Saigon on January 29, 1968, and his first story was about the Tet Offensive, which began later that night. While covering the war, he roomed with fellow journalists Tim Page, Sean Flynn, and Nik Wheeler. He left after witnessing the near-fatal injuries to Page. In 1975, his book Two of the Missing was published. The memoir was based on a magazine article of the same name that Young wrote in Harper's Magazine in December 1972, with the intention of later writing a book about the disappearance of Flynn and Stone. He had met and worked with them in Vietnam covering the war, and they went missing after Young had left.

Ater reading of Kopay's post-retirement revelation of being gay, Young offered to help Kopay write a book. The offer was accepted, and in 1977, the book became the first book about a sports figure to appear on the New York Times Best Seller list. For a time, Young and Kopay lived together in Washington, D.C.

A Killing Cure, about Evelyn Walker's malpractice suit against psychiatrist Zane Parzen, was published in 1982. In a 1998 profile, Young revealed that "[the] book made no money at all, and it was a disaster."

He was a columnist for The Chapel Hill Herald from 1996—2003.

Young has long acknowledged that he is gay, writing candidly about it in Two of the Missing, and has written or co-written books with gay-related themes, including The David Kopay Story and Lesbians and Gays and Sports. He has lived in the basement of a non-profit counseling and support group in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, working around the building in lieu of rent, since 1993.

Books

• (originally published in 1975)
• (with David Kopay; originally published in 1977)
• (reissued 2005 by iUniverse)
• (with Evelyn Walker)

Plays

• Frankie, Southern Appalachian Repertory Theatre August 2001 (with William Gregg)
• Mountain of Hope, SART, July 7, 2004 (with William Gregg)
• Home Again, July 29, 2009 (with William Gregg)