Water Street
Author(s):
Crystal Wilkinson
Book summary:
In this critically acclaimed short story collection, Crystal Wilkinson peels back the intricate layers that form the fabric of this community and its inhabitants – revealing emotionally raw, multifaceted tales of race, class, gender, mental illness, and interpersonal relationships. The thirteen succinct stories offer fragmented glimpses of an overarching narrative that emerges, lyrical and fierce. Featuring a new foreword and a new afterword which illuminate Wilkinson’s artistic achievement, this captivating work is poised to delight a new generation of readers.
Publication year:
2017
Publisher:
University Press of Kentucky
Award(s):
Finalist for the Orange Prize
Finalist for the Hurston Wright Prize
Praise:
Quote:
Evidence of Wilkinson's considerable promise...Water Street continues to establish her as an author who deserves wider attention.
Credit:
The Washington Post
Quote:
Wilkinson is a storyteller in the tradition of Southerners such as Eudora Welty and Carson McCullers.
Credit:
Lexington Herald-Leader
Quote:
A sharp African American updating of Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio.
Credit:
Utne Reader
Bio:
Photo:
Short bio:
Crystal Wilkinson is the award-winning author of The Birds of Opulence (winner of the 2016 Ernest J. Gaines Prize for Literary Excellence), Water Street and Blackberries, Blackberries. Nominated for both the Orange Prize and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, she has received recognition from The Kentucky Foundation for Women, The Kentucky Arts Council, The Mary Anderson Center for the Arts, The Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and is a recipient of the Chaffin Award for Appalachian Literature. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and her short stories, poems and essays have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including most recently in the Oxford American and Southern Cultures. She currently teaches at the University of Kentucky where she is Associate Professor of English in the MFA in Creative Writing Program.
A&S department affiliation:
Book URL:
https://www.kentuckypress.com/live/title_detail.php?titleid=2643#.XBkbDGhKizw