Crystal Wilkinson, a recent recipient of a Writing Freedom fellowship , is the award-winning author of Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts, a national-bestselling memoir, 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 an NAACP Image Award, an O. Henry Prize, an Academy of American Poets Fellowship, a USA Artists Fellowship, and an Ernest J. Gaines Prize for Literary Excellence. Her new book Heartsick is forthcoming from Crown.