LEXINGTON, Ky. -- Crystal Wilkinson, the Bush-Holbrook Endowed Professor of English in the University of Kentucky's College of Arts and Sciences, is the winner of the 2025 Corrington Award for Literary Excellence.

She will give a reading and accept her award in a ceremony on Monday, Oct. 27, at Centenary College of Louisiana in Shreveport. 

Wilkinson’s work includes:

• A national-bestselling memoir "Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts."
• Three works of fiction: “Blackberries, Blackberries” (2000), “Water Street” (2002) and “The Birds of Opulence” (2016).
• A book of poetry titled “Perfect Black” (2021). 

Her short stories, poems and essays have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including The Atlantic, The Kenyon Review, STORY, Agni Literary Journal, Emergence, Oxford American and Southern Cultures. 

Wilkinson is a former poet laureate of Kentucky and was recently inducted into the Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame. She is also a recipient of an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Poetry, an O. Henry Prize, an Academy of American Poets Fellowship, a USA Artists Fellowship and an Ernest J. Gaines Prize for Literary Excellence. 

Previous winners of the Corrington Award include Eudora Welty, Ruth Ozeki, Percival Everett, George Singleton, Richard Bausch, Tim O’Brien, Richard Powers, Bobbie Ann Mason, Ernest Gaines and Lee Smith. Wilkinson currently teaches at UK, where she is the Bush-Holbrook Endowed Professor.