By Whitney Harder

(April 4, 2016) — Crystal Wilkinson, award-winning author and current writer-in-residence at Berea College, will give a talk titled "Black Women and Mental Health in Appalachia" at the University of Kentucky on Tuesday, April 5.

The talk, free and open to the public, will be held from 3-4:30 p.m., in the UK Athletics Auditorium in the William T. Young Library.

Hosted by the UK Appalachian Center and UK African American and Africana Studies Program, the event will also include a reading by Wilkinson of her newest novel, "The Birds of Opulence,"published by University Press of Kentucky, and a discussion with audience members. She is also the author of "Blackberries, Blackberries," winner of the 2002 Chaffin Award for Appalachian Literature, and "Water Street," a finalist for both the UK's Orange Prize for Fiction and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award.

Wilkinson, a member of the Kentucky Arts Council, has presented workshops and readings throughout the country. She served as a creative writing faculty member for the Kentucky Governor's School for the Arts from 1997 to 2001.

She was recently named Appalachian Writer-in-Residence at Berea College, where she teaches writing and literature. She is also a faculty member in the brief residency Master of Fine Arts in Writing Program at Spalding University. Wilkinson and her partner, artist and poet Ron Davis, own Wild Fig Books and Coffee, located on North Limestone, in Lexington.