Mining Memories: A Multiple Genre Workshop on Ancestry - $50 Tuition - IN-PERSON

This is a workshop for all skill levels and writers of poetry, fiction or nonfiction. We will generate new material by mining the memories of our lives. Everyone has within them automatic stories, experiences that haunt them and won't let go. What do we tell? What do we keep to ourselves? We will write toward a balance of the sacred and the memorable. Each participant will leave the workshop with the impression of a new essay, poem, or short story--one that is deeply felt--ready to be crafted.

Crystal Wilkinson, Kentucky's Poet Laureate and author of The Birds of Opulence, Water Street, Blackberries, Blackberries, and her most recent book Perfect Black (a memoir in verse) leads this In-Person workshop. Lisa Rocklin hosts.

We are offering two tuition levels, as we do not want cost to be the barrier between anyone and this workshop. Additional financial support is available by completing this scholarship application at the time of your registration. For guidance to help you decide what fee is the best fit for you, please refer to The Green Bottle graphic, designed by community healing practitioner Alexis J. Cunningfolk.

By registering here, you are enrolling in the workshop for $50. If you would like to enroll at the $25 tuition rate, please click here.

COVID-19 Protocol: Masks are required and will be available at the workshop.

This program is made possible by a grant from The Harris Family Fund.

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.  

Her most recent novel, a lyrical exploration of love and loss, The Birds of Opulence centers on several generations of women in a bucolic southern black township as they live with and sometimes surrender to madness. Her collection, Perfect Black, was published August 2021.

Crystal identifies as a southern, feminist fiction writer, and grew up in the hills of Kentucky. She currently teaches at the University of Kentucky where she is Associate Professor of English in the MFA in Creative Writing Program. She is a 2020 USA Artist Fellowship Recipient, and makes her home in Lexington, KY. In 2021, Crystal was named the Poet Laureate for Kentucky.
https://www.facebook.com/wilkinsoncrystal

(Photo Credit: Anastasia Pottinger of Rogue Studios)