LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Kentucky author Crystal Wilkinson, whose stories of African American women in the rural South have been chosen for UofL English majors to study this year, will speak about her work Oct. 2 on campus.
Wilkinson’s topic will be “Art, Creativity and Imagination: Is That Story True?”
The free, public event will run from 4 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. in Ekstrom Library’s Chao Auditorium. Wilkinson’s talk is the English department’s Barker lecture.
Wilkinson’s 2000 short-story collection “Blackberries, Blackberries” was selected as the 2008–09 “Book in Common” in a diversity program co-sponsored by the department and the College of Arts and Sciences. Undergraduate English majors receive the free text, and several professors incorporate it into their teaching. She will discuss her fiction writing with students in a question-and-answer session Oct. 3.
Wilkinson is a writer in residence at Morehead State University and a creative writing faculty member at Spalding University. The Midway resident is working on two novels, one of which is scheduled for publication this fall.
Her other short-story collection, “Water Street,” was released in 2002. Wilkinson’s stories also have been published in literary anthologies such as “Confronting Appalachian Stereotypes: Back Talk from an American Region,” “Gift from our Grandmothers,” “Home and Beyond: A Half-Century of Short Stories by Kentucky Writers,” “A Kentucky Christmas” and “Gumbo: Stories by Black Writers,” as well as in numerous literary journals.
Wilkinson won the Chaffin Award for Appalachian Literature in 2002 and is a founding member of the Affrilachian Poets group of southern writers.
For more information, call the English department office, 502-852-6801.