WEST LIBERTY, W.Va., March 14, 2023 — The Kentucky Poet Laureate, Crystal Wilkinson, will be the honored guest for West Liberty University’s Hughes Lecture on Thursday, April 20, 2023. Free and open to the public, the lecture gets started at 4 p.m.
Wilkinson will be introduced by West Virginia Poet Laureate Marc Harshman.
“We are excited to welcome Crystal Wilkinson to our campus. She is a leading and influential voice in Appalachian literature, and the students and campus community will no doubt be inspired and enriched by her classroom visit and lecture,” said Dr. Scott Hanna, who coordinates the Hughes Lecture and is an associate professor of English and creative writing coordinator in the College of Liberal and Creative Arts.
Occurring every spring, the Hughes Lecture series began in the 1970s and is named after Dr. Raymond Grove Hughes, a beloved teacher who joined West Liberty in 1931. His generous endowment gift established a fund managed by the WLU Foundation and known as the Hughes Lecture Series Endowed Fund.
Wilkinson will meet with creative writing students at 12:30 p.m. and then deliver the Hughes Lecture at 4 p.m. in the Elbin Library Alumni Wall of Honor Alcove, located on the third floor of the library building. A reception and book signing will immediately follow.
A recent fellowship recipient of the Academy of American Poets, 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.
Wilkinson 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.
“Praise Song for the Kitchen Ghosts,” a culinary memoir, is forthcoming from Clarkson Potter/Penguin Random House. She currently teaches at the University of Kentucky where she is professor of English in the MFA in the Creative Writing Program.
Thanks to the Hughes Lecture Series Endowed Fund, the series has brought a wide range of authors and speakers to WLU, including: David Sheff, author of “Beautiful Boy,” Jeannette Walls, author of “The Glass Castle;” Dr. Ralph Abernathy, confidant of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.; Eugene McCarthy, U. S. Senator and presidential candidate in 1968 and NASA scientist Homer Hickam.
Copies of Wilkinson’s books are available now at the Barnes and Noble campus bookstore, located in the Campus Union (304.336.8211). Books also will be available for purchase at the Hughes Lecture for signing.
For more info on the Hughes Lecture, please contact wshanna@westliberty.edu.