When African-American writer Crystal Wilkinson of Kentucky learned she won the 2016 Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence, she said she reverted to her 12-year-old self, shrieking and squealing with glee. “I am over the moon,” Wilkinson told The Associated Press about winning the nationally acclaimed prize for “Birds of Opulence,” her exploration of generations of troubled women in the fictional Southern black township of Opulence.