Award-winning poet and memoirist Crystal Wilkinson will showcase her literary contributions as a part of the A. E. Stringer Visiting Writer Series on Thursday, April 11.
Wilkinson holds numerous accolades in poetry including being the former Kentucky Poet-Laureate. She is also a recent fellowship recipient of the Academy of African Poets. Her collection of poems entitled “Perfect Black” earned her the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Poetry.
Along with poetry, she is also a memoirist. Her national bestseller “Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts” is a culinary memoir that explores the legacy of Black Appalachians, along with their recipes. Wilkinson has also written three pieces of fiction: ”The Birds of Opulence,” “Water Street” and “Blackberries, Blackberries.”
Wilkinson currently teaches cre- ative writing at the University of Kentucky where she is a Bush-Holbrook Endowed Professor.
The A.E. Stringer Visiting Writer Series is sponsored by the Department of English, College of Liberal Arts and the West Virginia Humanities Council. The event will be in the Shawkey Dining Room in the Memorial Student Center at 7:30 p.m. It is free and open to the public.
