PRAISESONG FOR THE KITCHEN GHOSTS

This lyrical culinary journey of a cookbook from the Poet Laureate of Kentucky, Crystal Wilkerson, tells the hidden stories of Black Appalachians through essays and recipes.

Years ago, when O. Henry Prize-winning writer Crystal Wilkinson was baking a jam cake, she felt her late grandmother's presence. She soon realized that she was not the only cook in her kitchen, that there was an abundance of ancestors stirring, measuring, braising with her. These are her kitchen ghosts, five generations of Black women who arrived in her region of Appalachia, and who made a life, a legacy, and a cuisine whose stories live within the mind and recipes of Wilkinson's heirloom recipe box. This book is part food memoir, part cookbook, drawn from historical records, memory and interviews, and intertwined with fiction.

Crystal Wilkinson, Kentucky's Poet Laureate, is the award-winning author of PERFECT BLACK, THE BIRDS OF OPULENCE, and BLACKBERRIES, BLACKBERRIES (all published by the University Press of Kentucky), among others. 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. 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. She currently teaches at the University of Kentucky where she is Associate Professor of English in the MFA in Creative Writing Program.