FRANKFORT, Ky. (Jan. 16, 2025) – Renowned writers and former Kentucky Poet Laureates Crystal Wilkinson and Frank X Walker will host a New Kentucky Home experience, leading individual writing workshops simultaneously at General Butler State Resort Park Feb. 7-8. These workshops will be open to the public and will include guided discussions and sessions with the two literary luminaries.
The workshop will begin on the evening of Friday, Feb. 7 with dinner and a writing session and will conclude with a morning session on Saturday, Feb. 8. Several package options are available. The lodging option includes the workshop, an overnight stay on Friday, dinner on Friday and breakfast on Saturday, with a cost of $250 plus tax. The day package with the workshop and one meal costs $150 plus tax, and the day package without a meal included is $125 plus tax.
To learn more about the package options and to register, call the park at 502-732-4384 and use group code 7210. Retreat spots are limited, and registration is first come, first served.
Crystal Wilkinson is the award-winning author of Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts, a national-bestselling culinary 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 for Outstanding Poetry, an O. Henry Prize, an Academy of American Poets Fellowship, a USA Artists Fellowship and an Ernest J. Gaines Prize for Literary Excellence. She was Poet Laureate of Kentucky from 2021 to 2023. She currently teaches creative writing at the University of Kentucky where she is a Bush-Holbrook Endowed Professor and Director of the Division of Creative Writing. Her memoir Heartsick is forthcoming from Crown.
Frank X Walker was the first African American writer to be named Kentucky Poet Laureate from 2013 to 2015. Walker has published 13 collections of poetry, including Turn Me Loose: The Unghosting of Medgar Evers, which was awarded the 2014 NAACP Image Award for Poetry and the Black Caucus American Library Association Honor Award for Poetry. Voted one of the most creative professors in the south, Walker coined the term “Affrilachia” and co- founded the Affrilachian Poets, subsequently publishing the much-celebrated eponymous collection. Walker is the founding editor of pluck! The Journal of Affrilachian Arts & Culture and serves as Professor of English and African American and Africana Studies at the University of Kentucky in Lexington. His most recent collection is Masked Man, Black: Pandemic & Protest Poems.
In 2024, Kentucky Poet Laureate Silas House hosted writing workshops at Cumberland Falls State Resort Park, Dale Hollow State Resort Park and Lake Barkley State Resort Park as part of Kentucky State Parks’ 100th Anniversary Celebration. This workshop is a continuation of Kentucky State Parks’ partnership with Kentucky writers.
Kentucky is home to 44 state parks, including 17 resort parks and 13 golf courses. For more information about Kentucky State Parks, visit parks.ky.gov.