Daughters of Muscadine: Stories by Monic Ductan (University Press of Kentucky/Fireside Industries) has won the 2023 Weatherford Award in Fiction, presented by Berea College and the Appalachian Studies Association to honor fiction, nonfiction, and poetry books that "best illuminate the challenges, personalities, and unique qualities of the Appalachian South."
Organizers said, "Covering the last one hundred years, Ductan's collection shares the stories of people whose voices have been suppressed and erased for too long: Black women, rural women, Appalachian women, and working-class women. Ductan presents the extraordinary nature of everyday lives in the tradition of Alice Walker, Deesha Philyaw, James McBride, and Dorothy Allison in an engaging, engrossing, and exciting new voice."
Ductan teaches literature and creative writing at Tennessee Tech University. Her writing has appeared in such journals as Oxford American, Good River Review, Southeast Review, Shenandoah, Appalachian Heritage, and South Carolina Review. Her essay "Fantasy Worlds" was listed as notable in The Best American Essays 2019.
Finalists in the fiction category were Good Women: Stories by Halle Hill, On the Savage Side by Tiffany McDaniel, and The Songs of Betty Baach by Glenn Taylor.