Award-winning writer Crystal Wilkinson, guest author at Bluffton University’s 30th annual English Festival on April 1, will also speak at the weekly campus forum that Tuesday, beginning at 11 a.m. in Founders Hall.

In “Writing Black, Writing Appalachian”—which is free and open to the public—the Kentucky-based fiction writer and poet will discuss growing up African-American in Appalachia and the importance of place in her writing. She will read from her work as well.

Wilkinson, who also teaches writing and literature at Morehead (Ky.) State University, is the author of “Blackberries, Blackberries”—winner of the 2002 Chaffin Award for Appalachian Literature—and “Water Street.” She has received additional awards from Appalachian Heritage magazine and the Kentucky Foundation for Women, among others. She and her partner, poet and artist Ron Davis, own The Wild Fig Bookstore in Lexington, Ky.