Crystal

Wilkinson

Poet Laureate, Kentucky

Novelist

Travels from: Lexington, KY

“I was literally on the edge of my seat the entire time, so captivated by her presence.” — U of Alabama, 2021

Crystal Wilkinson, a recent fellowship recipient of the Academy of American Poets, is the award-winning author of Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts, a culinary memoir, Perfect Black, a collection of poems, and three works of fiction—The Birds of Opulence, Water Street and Blackberries, Blackberries. She is the recipient of an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Poetry, an O. Henry Prize, a USA Artists Fellowship, and an Ernest J. Gaines Prize for Literary Excellence. Named Kentucky’s Poet Laureate from 2021 to 2023, she has received recognition from the Yaddo Foundation, Hedgebrook, The Vermont Studio Center for the Arts, The Hermitage Foundation and others. Her short stories, poems and essays have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including most recently in The Atlantic, The Kenyon Review, STORY, Agni Literary Journal, Emergence, Oxford American and Southern Cultures. She currently teaches at the University of Kentucky where she is Bush-Holbrook Professor in Creative Writing.

Crystal's Featured Titles

Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts: Stories and Recipes from Five Generations of Black Country Cooks

Clarkson Potter |

January 23, 2024

Southern Cooking

A lyrical culinary journey that explores the hidden legacy of Black Appalachians, through powerful storytelling alongside nearly forty comforting recipes, from the former poet laureate of Kentucky.

People are always surprised that Black people reside in the hills of Appalachia. Those not surprised that we were there, are surprised that we stayed.

Years ago, when O. Henry Prize-winning writer Crystal Wilkinson was baking a jam cake, she felt her late grandmother’s presence. She soon realized that she was not the only cook in her kitchen; there were her ancestors, too, stirring, measuring, and braising alongside her. These are her kitchen ghosts, five generations of Black women who settled in Appalachia and made a life, a legacy, and a cuisine.

An expert cook, Wilkinson shares nearly forty family recipes rooted deep in the past, full of flavor—delicious favorites including Corn Pudding, Chicken and Dumplings, Granny Christine’s Jam Cake, and Praisesong Biscuits, brought to vivid life through stunning photography. Together, Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts honors the mothers who came before, the land that provided for generations of her family, and the untold heritage of Black Appalachia.

As the keeper of her family’s stories and treasured dishes, Wilkinson shares her inheritance in Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts. She found their stories in her apron pockets, floating inside the steam of hot mustard greens and tucked into the sweet scent of clove and cinnamon in her kitchen. Part memoir, part cookbook, Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts weaves those stories together with recipes, family photos, and a lyrical imagination to present a culinary portrait of a family that has lived and worked the earth of the mountains for over a century.

American South / Appalachia, BIPOC Representation, Black Voices, Food & Culinary, Memoir & Personal Journeys, Nonfiction

Perfect Black

University Press of Kentucky |

August 3, 2021

Poetry

Crystal Wilkinson combines a deep love for her rural roots with a passion for language and storytelling in this compelling collection of poetry and prose about girlhood, racism, and political awakening, imbued with vivid imagery of growing up in Southern Appalachia. In Perfect Black, the acclaimed writer muses on such topics as motherhood, the politics of her Black body, lost fathers, mental illness, sexual abuse, and religion. It is a captivating conversation about life, love, loss, and pain, interwoven with striking illustrations by her long-time partner, Ronald W. Davis.

Addiction & Recovery, American South / Appalachia, BIPOC Representation, Black Voices, Campus Reads, Disability Awareness, Poetry

The Birds Of Opulence (Kentucky Voices)

University Press of Kentucky |

March 18, 2016

Novel

From the critically acclaimed, award-winning author of Blackberries, Blackberries and Water Street comes an astonishing new novel. A lyrical exploration of love and loss, The Birds of Opulence centers on several generations of women in a bucolic southern black township as they live with and sometimes surrender to madness.

The Goode-Brown family, led by matriarch and pillar of the community Minnie Mae, is plagued by old secrets and embarrassment over mental illness and illegitimacy. Meanwhile, single mother Francine Clark is haunted by her dead, lightning-struck husband and forced to fight against both the moral judgment of the community and her own rebellious daughter, Mona. The residents of Opulence struggle with vexing relationships to the land, to one another, and to their own sexuality. As the members of the youngest generation watch their mothers and grandmothers pass away, they live with the fear of going mad themselves and must fight to survive.

Crystal Wilkinson offers up Opulence and its people in lush, poetic detail. It is a world of magic, conjuring, signs, and spells, but also of harsh realities that only love―and love that’s handed down―can conquer. At once tragic and hopeful, this captivating novel is a story about another time, rendered for our own.

American South / Appalachia, BIPOC Representation, Black Voices, Campus Reads, Community Reads, Fiction

Blackberries, Blackberries

University Press of Kentucky |

November 3, 2011

Short Story Collection

An enchanting, haunting collection of stories by Crystal Wilkinson, a self-described Black, country girl and poet from rural Kentucky. The stories explore the joys and pain of the women of “Affrilachia,” and will touch the reader profoundly.

“I grew up on a farm in Indian Creek, Kentucky, during the seventies. I swam in creeks and roamed the knobs and hills. We had an outhouse and no inside running water. Our house was heated by coal and wood-burning stoves and we lived so far back in the woods that we could get only one television station. But it was a place of beauty–trees, green grass, and blue sky as far as you could see. I am country. Being country is as much a part of me as my full lips, wide hips, dreadlocks, and high cheek bones. There are many Black country folks who have lived and are living in small towns, up hollers and across knobs. They are all over the South–scattered like milk thistle seeds in the wind. The stories in this book are centered in these places.” –CRYSTAL E. WILKINSON

American South / Appalachia, BIPOC Representation, Black Voices

Water Street

University Press of Kentucky |

June 24, 2011

Short Story Collection

The residents of Water Street are hardworking, God-fearing people who live in a seemingly safe and insulated neighborhood within a small Kentucky town: “Water Street is a place where mothers can turn their backs to flip a pancake or cornmeal hoecake on the stove and know our children are safe.” But all is not as it seems as the secret lives of neighbors and friends are revealed in interconnected tales of love, loss, truth, and tragedy.

In this critically acclaimed short story collection.

American South / Appalachia, BIPOC Representation, Black Voices, Fiction

The Lure of Imaginary People: Readers and Writers

Writing from the Belly and the Heart: Fiction Workshop

Writing Your Family: Fiction Workshop

“Crystal is an engaging and moving speaker. Her address was the perfect start to our educator’s conference. Attendees left the room feeling inspired and motivated!” — Kentucky Association for Environmental Education, 2024

“Crystal Wilkinson visited Marshall University as part of the Fall 2024 A.E. Stringer Visiting Writers Series. She is a phenomenal speaker, and our students connected with her down-to-earth, eloquent stories of family, foodways, and Appalachia. Our university is a better place for Crystal having visited us, and I hope that she will consider reading for us again in the future!” — Marshall University, 2024

“Crystal, per usual, shared her highly personal spirit and dynamic expression with people, meeting them at that magical intersection where storytelling becomes a vulnerable and vibrant exchange of care. Her reading was…stunning. People responded to her with great interest and perhaps one of the most inspiring elements of Crystal’s presence was her clear, intentional connection with the younger adult arts apprentices who also served and performed at the event. She took time to converse with them, also referring to their work and interests on the stage. More than a kind gesture, this approach showed Crystal’s authentic community-minded value for her storytelling leadership. As her impact grows beyond even our national landscape, her character remains dedicated to home places and home people. Crystal is a great American author who recognizes that expressive arts arise from community nourishment and connection. We all loved spending time with her — her work and nature holds community accountability, humble vulnerability, and mesmerizing turns of craft. I believe with all my heart that Crystal’s presence will continue to matter deeply to all of the generational attendees, with a special impact on our rising next generation of literary leaders.” — Urban Appalachian Community Coalition, 2024

“Riveting presentation! Engaged audience. Timely message.” — Kentucky Humanities, 2024

“Crystal is such a genuinely kind human being. Not a single one of our attendees felt rushed during the book signing.” — Partners for Rural Impact, 2024

“Crystal Wilkinson is a literary force! She is a master storyteller who welcomes all who enter the worlds she creates on and off the page.” — Torch Literary Arts, 2024

“It was an honor and a true pleasure to host Crystal Wilkinson for a reading from Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts and discussion about writing, spirituality, family, and cooking. She was enormously generous in conversation with our students, faculty, and staff and we all left the events with new energy and resources for approaching our own work in different areas.” — Princeton Crossroads Project, 2024

“Crystal Wilkinson is an inspiration. Her work speaks for itself, but to host her in person is a real gift. From her thoughtful interactions with students to meaningful insights delivered on stage, she inspires all who have the privilege to attend one of her events.” — UNC Asheville, 2023

“Crystal Wilkinson’s vulnerability – on Black girlhood, reverent lineage of homeplace, impact of mental health fractures in the family, and adolescent sexual awakening and trauma — in her poetry collection, Perfect Black, reveals the soul of so many unrecognized Black girls. In her presentation, reading selections and discussing themes and her writing process, she revealed them. Young women in the audience at Jackson State University gasped at her reclamation of Black girl fatness as PERFECT. They sat straighter. So needed is her literary insights that one young women, her respondent, highlight and marked and took notes immediately after handed a copy of Perfect Black. Bemused, as I had bought it for myself, I told her: “it’s yours”. It is only the second poetry collection she’s ever owned and Perfect Black mattered to her. Marked up and torn pages to this volume is all the testimony that is needed.” — Shanna L. Smith, Ph.D., Jackson State U

“Crystal Wilkinson has the rare ability to infuse her subtle yet powerful prose with emotion, mood, place, and lyricism, making even familiar themes seem fresh and new without any cloying notes. Her unapologetic work distinguishes her as unique, Appalachian American voice, whose evocative food heritage writing is second to none. Your mouth will water. Your stomach will growl. Your heart will bask. Delicious.” — Ohio County Public Library

“Crystal Wilkinson was phenomenal to work with. She was kind, generous with her time, and really stepped up during the panel discussion when our moderator had to cancel at the last minute due to a funeral. Crystal prepared questions for her co-panelist, Frank X Walker, to guide the conversation into riveting territory, and after the panel, one of my colleagues texted me: ‘That hour of conversation was magnificent! I enjoyed every moment of it. So moving and so provoking.’ After the poetry reading, students told me that her poems brought them to tears and I can attest to that. I was literally on the edge of my seat the entire time, so captivated by her presence on screen. I hope to invite her to read in person one day, because if she is this powerful on a Zoom, I cannot begin to imagine the energy of an in-person event!” — U of Alabama, 2021

Upcoming Events

Crystal’s Short Stories

Food Writing

Honors, Awards & Recognition

Kentucky Poet Laureate
Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence
Judy Gaines Young Book Awards
Appalachian Book of the Year
The O. Henry Prize for Best Short Story, 2021
NAACP Image Award