The Murray State Reading Series will welcome Crystal Wilkinson, acclaimed author and current Kentucky Poet Laureate, to campus for a reading on Thursday, September 15 at 7:30 p.m. in the Curris Center Ballroom. The event is free and open to the public.

Crystal Wilkinson is the award-winning author of 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 a 2022 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Poetry, a 2021 O. Henry Prize, a 2020 USA Artists Fellowship, and a 2016 Ernest J. Gaines Prize for Literary Excellence. She has received recognition from the Yaddo Foundation, Hedgebrook, The Vermont Studio Center for the Arts, The Hermitage Foundation and others.

Wilkinson’s 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. Praise Song for the Kitchen Ghosts, a culinary memoir, is forthcoming from Clarkson Potter/Penguin Random House in August 2023. She currently teaches at the University of Kentucky where she is Associate Professor of English in the MFA in Creative Writing Program.

The Murray State Reading Series is sponsored by the Department of English and Philosophy. Additional support for Wilkinson’s reading is provided by Murray State’s College of Humanities and Fine Arts and the Office of Multicultural Initiatives.

For more information about this event, contact Carrie Jerrell, creative writing program coordinator (cjerrell1@murraystate.edu or 270-809-4723). For visitor parking information for the event, contact the Murray State Parking Services at 270-809-4812 or msu.parkingoffice@murraystate.edu.

To learn more about the Department of English and Philosophy and the creative writing program, visit their websites (murraystate.edu/creativewriting and murraystate.edu/english) and follow them on Instagram and Facebook (@murraystatecreativewriting and @murraystateenglish).