In this episode, Crystal Wilkinson reads her story “Endangered Species: Case 47401” from Story magazine.

Crystal Wilkinson is the author of three books, including The Birds of Opulence, (winner of the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence), Water Street and Blackberries, Blackberries. Nominated for both the Orange Prizes and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, she has received recognition from the Yaddo Foundation, The Vermont Studio Center for the Arts, 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 The Kenyon Review, Story, Agni Literary Journal, Oxford American, and Southern Cultures. She currently teaches at the University of Kentucky where she is an associate Professor of English in the MFA in Creative Writing Program.  

Story is a tri-annual print publication devoted to the complex and diverse world of narrative with a focus on fiction and nonfiction. Since 1931, work that originally appeared in Story has been reprinted dozens of times in editions of The Best American Short Stories, The Pushcart Prize, and The Prize Stories.