Crystal Wilkinson 
Crystal Wilkinson is the award-winning author of “The Birds of Opulence” (winner of the 2016 Ernest J. Gaines Prize for Literary Excellence), “Water Street,” and “Blackberries, Blackberries.” 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, The Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and is a recipient of the Chaffin Award for Appalachian Literature.
She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and her short stories, poems, and essays have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including most recently in the “Oxford American” and “Southern Cultures.”
She currently teaches at the University of Kentucky where she is Associate Professor of English in the MFA in Creative Writing Program. She and her partner, poet and artist Ron Davis, own Wild Fig Books & Coffee, which is located in the North Limestone neighborhood in Lexington.