Crystal Wilkinson
Esteemed Southern author Crystal Wilkinson will read from her award-winning novel “Birds of Opulence” and discuss the structure of the novel on Tuesday, Feb. 7, at Tusculum College.
“An Evening with Crystal Wilkinson” will begin at 7 p.m. in the Behan Arena Theatre in the lower level (side entrance) of the Annie Hogan Byrd Fine Arts Building on campus. The event is the first for 2017 in the Cicero Lecture Series, which is part of Tusculum Arts Outreach’s 2016-17 Acts, Arts, Academia performance and lecture series. The event is being held in conjunction with the College’s School of Arts and Sciences.
During her presentation, Wilkins will read from her 2015 novel, “Birds of Opulence,” which was winner of the 2016 Ernest Gaines Award for Literary Excellence. The novel lyrically tells the story of the loves and losses of several generations of women in a bucolic southern black township. Wilkinson will also discuss the narrative strategy and structure of the novel, which has also been described as a short story cycle.
In addition to “Birds of Opulence,” Wilkinson is the author of “Blackberries, Blackberries” and “Water Street.” “Blackberries, Blackberries” was recognized with the 2002 Paul and Lillie D. Chaffin Award for Appalachian Literature and was Today’s Librarian Magazine’s choice for 2001 Best Fiction Debut.
Several of Wilkinson’s short stories, poems and essays have appeared in a number of journals and anthologies, including most recently the Oxford American and the Appalachian anthology, “Walk Till the Dogs Get Mean.” Her short story, “My Girl Mona,” won the 2002 Fiction Prize for Indiana Review, and her poem, “Terrain” was awarded the 2008 Denny C. Plattner Award in Poetry from Appalachian Heritage.
Nominated for both the Orange Prize and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, she has received recognition from the Kentucky Foundation for Women, the Kentucky Arts Council, the Mary Anderson Center for the Arts and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown.
While serving as a public information officer and community relations manager for the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Wilkinson would gather with other Kentucky African-American writers at the University of Kentucky, a group later known as the Affrilachian Poets.
In 1997, she was hired as the assistant director of the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning in Lexington, where she taught courses and implemented many different programs and activities for Kentucky’s literary arts scene. She also taught high school juniors and seniors who were juried into the creative writing discipline for the Governor’s School for the Arts in Kentucky from 1997 to 2001, and again in 2008, and served as chair of the creative writing department from 1997 to 2001. In the spring of 2004, she served as the Writer-in-Residence for the Appalachian College Association.
Currently, Wilkinson is Writer-in-Residence and teaches at Berea College. She has taught creative writing at Eastern Kentucky University, Indiana University-Bloomington and Morehead State University.
She and her partner, poet and artist Ron Davis, own Wild Fig Books & Coffee, located in the North Limestone neighborhood in Lexington.
Admission for the lecture is $7. For more information about the lecture, call Tusculum College Arts Outreach at 423-798-1620, or email jhollowell@tusculum.edu.