Past Weatherford Award Winners - Loyal Jones Appalachian Center

1970 – Ben A. Franklin of the New York Times for his series of articles on Appalachia
1971 – David H. Looff – Appalachia’s Children
1972 – Eliot Wigginton and students of Rabun Gap – Nacoochee School – The Foxfire Book
1973 – Barry Bingham, Jr., of the Louisville Courier – Journal for thorough, persistent and influential reporting on Appalachia.
1974 – No award given
1975 – Brian Woolley and Ford Reid – We Be Here When the Morning Comes
1976 – Kai T. Erikson – Everything in Its Path
1977 – Gurney Norman – Kinfolks
1977 – Laurel Shackelford and Bill Weinberg – Our Appalachia
1978 – John W. Hevener – Which Side Are You On?
1978 – Henry D. Shapiro – Appalachia On Our Mind
1979 – Thomas J. Schoenbaum – The New River Controversy
1980 – John Gaventa – Power and Powerlessness: Quiescence and Rebellion in an Appalachian Valley
1981 – David Corbin – Life, Work, and Rebellion in the Coal Fields
1982 – Ronald Eller – Miners, Millhands, and Mountaineers
1983 – John Egerton – Generations
1984 – John Ehle – Last One Home
1985 – Eliot Wigginton – Sometimes a Shining Moment
1986 – Martin Cherniack – The Hawk’s Nest Incident
1987 – Denise Giardina – Storming Heaven
1987 – Rodger Cunningham – Apples on the Flood: The Southern Mountain Experience
1988 – Lee Smith – Fair and Tender Ladies
1989 – John Inscoe – Mountain Masters, Slavery, and the Sectional Crisis in Western North Carolina
1990 – Helen Lewis and Susanna O’Donnell – Remembering Our Past, Building Our Future
1991 – Crandall A. Shifflett – Coal Towns: Life, Work, and Culture in Company Towns of Southern Appalachia, 1880-1960
1992 – Denise Giardina – The Unquiet Earth
1993 – No award given
1994 – Henry Louis Gates, Jr. – Colored People: A Memoir
1995 – Deborah Vansau McCauley – Appalachian Mountain Religion: A History
1996 – Wilma A. Dunaway – The First American Frontier: Transition to Capitalism in Southern Appalachia, 1700-1860
1997 – Charles Frazier – Cold Mountain
1998 – Homer Hickam, Jr. – Rocket Boys: A Memoir
1999 – Loyal Jones – Faith and Meaning in the Southern Uplands
2000 – Dwight B. Billings and Kathleen M. Blee – The Road to Poverty: the Making of Wealth and Hardship in Appalachia
2001 – John O’Brien – At Home in the Heart of Appalachia
2002 – John A. Williams – Appalachia
2003 – Non-Fiction – Wilma A. Dunaway – Slavery in the American Mountain South
2003 – Fiction and Poetry – Gretchen Moran Laskas – The Midwife’s Tale
2004 – Non-Fiction – Michael Montgomery – Dictionary of Smoky Mountain English
2004 – Fiction and Poetry – Ron Rash – Saints at the River
2005 – Non-Fiction – Sharon Hatfield – Never Seen the Moon: The Trials of Edith Maxwell
2005 – Fiction and Poetry – Darnell Arnoult – What Travels With Us: Poems
2006 – Non-Fiction – Rudy Abramson and Jean Haskell, Editors – The Encyclopedia of Appalachia
2006 – Fiction and Poetry – Dot Jackson, John F. Blair Publisher – Refuge
2007 – Non-Fiction – James J. Lorence – A Hard Journey: The Life of Don West
2007 – Fiction and Poetry – Ann Pancake – Strange as this Weather Has Been
2008 – Fiction and Poetry – Ron Rash, Serena
2008 – Nonfiction – Ronald D Eller, Uneven Ground: Appalachia since 1945.
2009 – Nonfiction – Chris Green, The Social Life of Poetry (Palgrave Macmillan)
2009 – Fiction and Poetry – C.E. Morgan, All the Living (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux)
2010 – Nonfiction – Alessandro Portelli, They Say in Harlan County
2010 – Fiction – Amy Greene, Bloodroot
2010 – Poetry – Lisa J. Parker, this gone place
2011 – Nonfiction – Emily Satterwhite, Dear Appalachia: Readers, Identity, and Popular Fiction since 1978
2011 – Fiction – Charles Frazier, Night Woods
2011 – Poetry – Jesse Graves, Tennessee Landscape with Blighted Pine
2012 – Nonfiction – Kathryn Newfont, Blue Ridge Commons
2012 – Fiction – Barbara Kingsolver, Flight Behavior
2012 – Poetry – Richard Hague, During the Recent Extinctions
2013 – Nonfiction – T.R.C Hutton, Bloody Breathitt: Politics and Violence in the Appalachian South
2013 – Fiction – Karen Spears Zacharias, Mother of Rain
2013 – Poetry – Ron Houchin, The Man Who Saws Us in Half
2014 – Nonfiction – Susan Eike Spalding, Appalachian Dance: Creativity and Continuity in Six Communities
2014 – Fiction – Marie Manilla, The Patron Saint of Ugly
2014 – Poetry – Jesse Graves, Basin Ghosts
2015 – Nonfiction – Chad Berry, Phillip J. Obermiller, and Shaunna L. Scott, Editors, Studying Appalachian Studies: Making the Path by Walking
2015 – Fiction – Robert Gipe, Trampoline
2015 – Poetry – Nickole Brown, Fanny Says
2016 – Nonfiction – Steven E. Nash, Reconstruction’s Ragged Edge: The Politics of Postwar Life in the Southern Mountains
2016 – Fiction – Crystal Wilkinson, The Birds of Opulence
2016 – Poetry – Marc Harshman, Believe What You Can
2017 – Nonfiction – Carol Boggess, James Still: A Life
2017 – Fiction – Wiley Cash, The Last Ballad
2017 – Poetry – Pauletta Hansel, Palindrome
2018 – Nonfiction – Michael Clay Carey, The News Untold
2018 – Fiction – Silas House, Southernmost
2018 – Poetry – Sarah McCartt-Jackson, Stonelight
2019 – Nonfiction – Meredith McCarroll and Anthony Harkins, Appalachian Reckoning
2019 – Fiction – Michael Croley, Any Other Place
2019 – Poetry – Rose McLarney – Forage
2020 – Nonfiction – Eric Luke Lassiter, Brian A. Hoey, and Elizabeth Campbell, I’m Afraid of That Water: A Collaborative Ethnography of a West Virginia Water Crisis
2020 – Fiction – Carter Sickels, The Prettiest Star
2020 – Poetry – Matthew Wimberley , All the Great Territories

Special Weatherford Award Winners

The Weatherford Committee may create a special Weatherford Award to honor another work or body of work that makes an outstanding contribution to the understanding of Appalachian people.

1972 – Robert Coles, M.D.
1973 – Wilma Dykeman
1975 – Jesse Stuart
1976 – Harry Caudill
1977 – James Still
1978 – Harriette Simpson Arnow
1979 – Cratis Williams
1985 – Albert Stewart – Certificate of Achievement
1988 – Alfred Perrin
1996 – Loyal Jones
1999 – Sidney Saylor Farr
1999 – Jerry W. Williamson
2015 – Jim Wayne Miller in recognition of Every Leaf a Mirror: A Jim Wayne Miller Reader, edited by Morris Allen Grubbs and Mary Ellen Miller