CRYSTAL WILKINSON + ALISON HAWTHORNE DEMING: Looking Glass Rock Writers’ Conference Public Readings

Looking Glass Rock Writers’ Conference faculty, Crystal Wilkinson and Alison Hawthorne Deming, will give public readings of their work at the Transylvania County Library Rogow Room on May 21 at 7:30 pm.

Crystal Wilkinson, Kentucky’s Poet Laureate, is the award-winning author of Perfect Black, a collection of poems, and three works of fiction—The Birds of Opulence , Water Street and Blackberries, Blackberries. She is the recipient of a 2022 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Poetry, a 2021 O. Henry Prize, a 2020 USA Artists Fellowship, and a 2016 Ernest J. Gaines Prize for Literary Excellence. She has received recognition from the Yaddo Foundation, Hedgebrook, The Vermont Studio Center for the Arts, The Hermitage Foundation and others. Her short stories, poems and essays have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including most recently in The Atlantic, The Kenyon Review, STORY, Agni Literary Journal, Emergence, Oxford American and Southern Cultures.  Praise Song for the Kitchen Ghosts, a culinary memoir, is forthcoming from Clarkson Potter/Penguin Random House in August 2023. She currently teaches at the University of Kentucky where she is Associate Professor of English in the MFA in Creative Writing Program.

Alison Hawthorne Deming’s new nonfiction book A Woven World: On Fashion, Fishermen, and the Sardine Dress was published by Counterpoint Press in 2021. Her recent books include Stairway to Heaven and Death Valley: Painted Light, a collaboration with photographer Stephen Strom. The essay collection Zoologies: On Animals and the Human Spirit was published by Milkweed Editions in 2014. She is the author of Science and Other Poems, winner of the Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets; The Monarchs: A Poem Sequence; Genius Loci; and Rope; and three additional nonfiction books. She edited Poetry of the American West: A Columbia Anthology and co-edited with Lauret E. Savoy The Colors of Nature: Essays on Culture, Identity, and the Natural World.  Her work is widely published including in The Norton Book of Nature Writing and Best American Science and Nature Writing.

She is Agnese Nelms Haury Chair in Environment and Social Justice and Regents Professor at the University of Arizona. Her work has been awarded fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, Walt Whitman Award from the American Academy of Poets, Stegner Fellowship, and two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, among other honors.

The Looking Glass Rock Writers’ Conference (LGRWC) is a unique creative experience for writers which aspires to foster reading, writing, creativity, and a sense of place in Transylvania County.  The Transylvania County Library is a vital, trusted source for discovery, inspiration, and innovation at the heart of a community that celebrates learning, creativity, and curiosity.  Brevard College provides an experiential liberal arts education that encourages personal growth and inspires artistic, intellectual, and social action.

As partners, Brevard College and the Transylvania County Library Foundation seek to enrich the cultural and educational life of Transylvania County by nurturing and developing the LGRWC. Through intensive community-building creative workshops and public readings, the LGRWC will offer Transylvania County residents the opportunity to interact with renowned authors, engage in meaningful conversation about writing and place, and strengthen ties across generations by reaching out to the diverse population of Transylvania County.