Literary Partners Program: Reading and Conversation with Crystal Wilkinson

Join Kweli on Saturday, December 16th, 6-8PM for a reading and conversation with award-winning author and professor, Crystal Wilkinson.

Opening for Crystal Wilkinson’s reading will be Felicia Collins, guitarist and vocalist from the CBS Orchestra, Late Show with David Letterman.

Crystal Wilkinson is one of the founding members of The Affrilachian Poets, a group of black Appalachian poets. Her novel, Birds of Opulence, won the 2016 Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence.

Birds of Opulence follows several generations of women in the Goode-Brown family in the fictional Southern black township of Opulence. The family is plagued by mental illness and illegitimacy, as well as the accompanying embarrassment. As younger generations watch their mothers and grandmothers pass on, they also fear going mad and must fight to survive. An excerpt of the novel was published in Oxford American.

Crystal Wilkinson will read an excerpt from her memoir-in-progress. After the reading, she will be in conversation with Neela Vaswani.

This event is made possible through the Poets House Literary Partners Program