Crystal Wilkinson, Kentucky’s Poet Laureate from 2021 to 2023, is the award-winning author of Perfect Black; 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, a USA Artists Fellowship, and an Ernest J. Gaines Prize for Literary Excellence. She has received recognition from the Yaddo Foundation, Hedgebrook, The Hermitage Foundation, and others. Her short stories, poems, and essays have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. She currently teaches at the University of Kentucky in the creative writing MFA program.

"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: there were an abundance of ancestors stirring, measuring, and braising with her. These are her kitchen ghosts, five generations of Black women who arrived in her region of Appalachia and made a life, a legacy, and a cuisine. Part food memoir, part cookbook, [this volume] weaves fiction with historical records, memories, and interviews to present a unique culinary portrait of Black Appalachians. Forty recipes rooted deep in the past yet full of contemporary flavor are brought to vivid life through ... photography and beautiful illustrations. You'll find delicious favorites such as corn pudding, chicken and dumplings, jam cake, and praisesong biscuits woven into the narrative of Crystal's family, portraying the experience and history of Black Appalachians through their voice, spirit, and foodways"--