WKCTC One Book Read author visit next week

Water Street's Crystal Wilkinson on campus March 12-13

Paducah, KY (03/06/2019) — Crystal Wilkinson, author of West Kentucky Community and Technical College's 2018-19 One Book Read of Water Street, will visit campus March 12-13 as the finale to this year's project.

Wilkinson's public presentation will be held March 12 at 7 p.m. in the WKCTC Clemens Fine Arts Theatre. Prior to her presentation, the public is invited to an opening reception for Wilkinson at 6 p.m. in the Student Center. She will also give a student presentation March 13 at 11 a.m. in the college's Crounse Hall 101. Wilkinson will sign copies of her book following each presentation, which are both free and open to the public.

Wilkinson is an award-winning feminist poet, novelist, memoirist, and professor from Indian Creek, Kentucky. Now living in Lexington, she is a founding member of the Affrilachian Poets Collective and is currently Associate Professor of English in the Master in Fine Arts in Creative Writing Program at the University of Kentucky.

"We decided to move in a new direction of bringing distinguished regional authors to campus for the One Book Read, which is our annual program to promote literacy and the importance of reading," said Amy Sullilvan, WKCTC Matheson Library director and One Book Read committee co-chair. "Crystal was a perfect choice. Having such a talented and award-winning author from our own state on campus is exactly what we'd hoped to do. We encourage everyone to take this opportunity to come and meet her," said Sullivan.

The book tells the stories of the residents of Water Street, 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, Wilkinson peels back the intricate layers that form the fabric of this community and its inhabitantsrevealing emotionally raw, multifaceted tales of race, class, gender, mental illness, and interpersonal relationships. The thirteen succinct stories offer fragmented glimpses of an overarching narrative that emerges, lyrical and fierce.

"This book has mature themes that have encouraged critical thinking and open discussion of complex social issues, said Sullivan. "Through the One Book Read, we want continue to create open conversations of issues that are relevant to our daily lives, and Water Street does that."

Water Street was a finalist for both the Orange Prize and the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award. Wilkinson's first book, Blackberries, Blackberries, won the Chaffin Award for Appalachian Literature, and her third book, The Birds of Opulence, won the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence, The Judy Young Gaines Prize for Fiction, The Appalachian Book of the Year and the Weatherford Award. Her work-fiction, poetry, memoir-has been widely anthologized and published in countless journals and she was recently named a Southerner of the Year.

The One Book Read of Water Street has been made possible through a matching grant from Kentucky Humanities in cooperation with the National Endowment for the Humanities.

More information can be found at onebookread.com.

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