The Speed welcomes Crystal Wilkinson for a FREE writing workshop on Friday, April 18th from 2:30 pm – 4 pm. Ms. Wilkinson is an award-winning, highly celebrated literary voice from Kentucky. She is a recent recipient of a Writing Freedom fellowship, is the award-winning author of Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts, a national-bestselling culinary memoir, Perfect Black, a collection of poems, and three works of fiction—The Birds of Opulence, Water Street, and Blackberries, Blackberries. Crystal Wilkinson was Poet Laureate of Kentucky from 2021 to 2023. She currently teaches creative writing at the University of Kentucky, where she is a Bush-Holbrook Endowed Professor and Director of the Division of Creative Writing.

The workshop is FREE and will be an opportunity for community members to learn writing techniques directly from a Kentucky Poet Laureate and a quintessential voice from Appalachia.

Following the writing workshop, please join us at April After Hours, where Crystal Wilkinson will read from her newest book, Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts followed by a book signing.

This workshop is at capacity. We are encouraging folks to join her at After Hours for her reading mentioned above.