NEW ORLEANS (AP) – When author Crystal Wilkinson of Kentucky learned she won the 2016 Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence, she said she reverted to her 12-year-old self, shrieking and squealing with glee.
“I am over the moon,” Wilkinson told The Associated Press about winning the nationally acclaimed prize for “Birds of Opulence,” her novel exploring generations of troubled women in the fictional Southern black township of Opulence.
The Gaines Award and its $10,000 prize were created by a philanthropic group, the Baton Rouge Area Foundation, to recognize outstanding work by rising African-American fiction writers. The 54-year-old winner is Appalachian writer in residence at Berea College in Kentucky and will be presented the award Thursday in Baton Rouge.
Her first novel-length work, “Birds of Opulence” follows several generations of women of the Goode-Brown family who are plagued by mental illness, illegitimacy and the embarrassment that ensues. As younger generations watch their mothers and grandmothers die, they fear going mad and fight to survive.
“This gives me a huge boost at this point in my career,” Wilkinson said. “It gives me huge confidence to know that I can do the next one and the next one and the next one.”