Crystal Wilkinson is the author of three books, most recently The Birds of Opulence (University Press of Kentucky, 2016), which won the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence and is a 2019 finalist for the John Dos Passos Award. Her second book, Water Street (Lake Union Publishing, 2011), was a finalist for the Orange Prize and the Hurston Wright Legacy Award. Her short fiction has appeared in Story, The Oxford American, Kenyon Review, AGNI, Southern Cultures, and elsewhere. She lives and teaches in Lexington, Kentucky. (updated 9/2019)