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Winners of the Weatherford Award for Best Books About Appalachia

Winners of the Weatherford Award for Best Books About Appalachia

Weatherford Awards honor books deemed as best illuminating the challenges, personalities, and unique qualities of the Appalachian South. Granted by Berea College and the Appalachian Studies Association for 50 years, the awards commemorate the life and achievements of W.D. Weatherford Sr., a pioneer and leading figure in Appalachian development, youth work and race relations, and his son, Willis D. Weatherford Jr., Berea College’s sixth president.  The poetry award was established in 2010 to honor the life and work of Dr. Grace Toney Edwards, former Director of the Appalachian Regional Studies Center at Radford University.

Current Winners

We are pleased to announce this year’s winners of the 2022 Weatherford Awards! These are separated into 3 categories: fiction, nonfiction and poetry honoring books that “best illuminate the challenges, personalities, and unique qualities of the Appalachian South.”

Fiction Award

Demon Copperhead book by Barbara Kingsolver
Demon Copperhead

By Barbara Kingsolver

Finalists
  • Where I Can’t Follow by Ashley Blooms
  • Traces by Patricia Hudson

Poetry Award

Finalists
  • In the Hands of the River by Lucien Darjeun Meados
  • The Tillable Land by Melva Sue Priddy
Where You Come from Is Gone by Annie Woodford
Where You Come from Is Gone

By Annie Woodford

Nonfiction Award

Ginseng Diggers By Luke Manget
Ginseng Diggers

By Luke Manget

Finalists
  • Making Our Future: Visionary Folklore & Everyday Culture in Appalachia by Emily Hilliard
  • Another Appalachia: Coming Up Queer and Indian in a Mountain Place by Neema Avashia
  • Something in These Hills: The Culture of Family Land in Southern Appalachia by John M. Coggeshall

Past Winners