Kathy Y. Wilson

Wilson was born to Clarence Wilson, a steel worker, and Gladine Parrish, a nurse.[1] She has two older brothers and a younger half-sister.[1] She spent her childhood in Hamilton, Ohio, before her parents divorced and her mother left with the children, eventually settling in Forest Park, Ohio.[1] She graduated from Greenhills High School.[2] She attended the University of Cincinnati but didn't graduate.[1]

She worked for five years as a reporter for the Hamilton Journal-News and described editors sending her out on "black stories."[2][3][1]

Between 1999 and 2007 she created an opinion column, a nonfiction book and a one-woman play all titled Your Negro Tour Guide.[4][5][6][7] Wilson wrote the column for alternative weekly City Beat from 1999 through 2006 and 2012 to 2015; the title refers to a retort she made to white former coworkers' questions about Black culture when Wilson was the only Black person in the newsroom.[5][8]

Wilson was a commentator for National Public Radio.[4][9] She wrote for City Beat, Cincinnati Magazine, and the Cincinnati Enquirer.[9][10] She taught at the University of Cincinnati.[9]

In 2014 she was the Cincinnati Public Library's first Writer-in-Residence.[9][11][12] She was awarded the 2016 ArtsWave Sachs Fund Prize.[9][12][13]

As of 2018 she was a senior editor at Cincinnati Magazine and an adjunct professor in University of Cincinnati's Women’s Studies department.[2] She was a regular contributor of commentary on NPR's All Things Considered.[12] She was twice a fellow for the Knight Center for Specialized Journalism at the University of Maryland.[12]

In 2018 a recreation of Wilson's apartment was featured as an exhibit, "Sanctuary: Kathy Y. Wilson Living in a Colored Museum" at the Weston Gallery at the Aronoff Center for the Arts.[5]

She authored two other books, Your Negro City Guide and True Grits: A Short Stack of Food and Family in Over the Rhine.[2]

Publishers Weekly said "her writing works best when it's crackling and clipped".[4] Pittsburgh City Paper describes her as 'writing carefree of the "white gaze." '[19] The Cincinnati Enquirer called her the city's "unofficial conscience."[9] Tony Norman said, "Wilson's use of language is a virtual bouillabaisse of postmodern negritude, political cunning and psychological insight."[20] In July 2020, during the fallout from the murder of George Floyd, Cincinnati Magazine named the book one of five must-read books by local Black authors.[21] The Cincinnati Enquirer called her "one of Cincinnati's most fearless 21st-century writers."[13]

Wilson was a lesbian.[4][19] She lived in the Walnut Hills neighborhood of Cincinnati with her partner, Kandice.[4][9][6] She wrote and spoke about her father's pedophilia conviction.[22]

In July 2020 she had a kidney transplant.[9] Wilson died November 22, 2022, of kidney failure.[23]