NASHVILLE, Tenn. (November 7, 2024) – Humanities Tennessee, in partnership with the Tennessee State Library and Archives, recently announced the winners of the first-ever Tennessee Book Awards.  

Monic Ductan won in the fiction category for her short story collection Daughters of Muscadine; Rachel Louise Martin won in non-fiction for her book, A Most Tolerant Little Town: The Explosive Beginning of School Desegregation; and Denton Loving won the poetry category for his poetry anthology, Tamp. 

The winners each received a $2,500 prize, and winners and finalists spoke about their work at a special session at the Southern Festival of Books in October.

“Tennessee is rich with literary talent, and we have dreamed for years of establishing a statewide award to honor our best writers,” said Tim Henderson, Executive Director of Humanities Tennessee. “We are thrilled to recognize these incredibly talented individuals for their contributions to the cultural life of the state. Our judges had a difficult task, thanks to the high caliber of all the submissions, and we are grateful for their diligent work to identify the best of the best, in keeping with Tennessee’s long and storied literary tradition.”   

A statewide panel of teachers, librarians and Humanities Tennessee staffers reviewed all submissions and selected finalists. The winners were chosen by an all-star collection of authors: Haitian-American novelist Edwidge Danticat, award-winning journalist and editor John Jeremiah Sullivan, and acclaimed and prolific poet George Ella Lyon. 

More about each book

Fiction: Monic Ductan, for Daughters of Muscadine – Ductan teaches literature and creative writing at Tennessee Tech University. Her writing has appeared in journals including 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. 

Other fiction finalists were Lauren Thoman for I’ll Stop the World, and Johanna Rojas Vannes for An American Immigrant. 

Non-Fiction: Rachel Louise Martin, for A Most Tolerant Little Town: The Explosive Beginning of School Desegregation  – Martin is a historian and writer whose work has appeared in The Atlantic and Oxford American, among other publications. The author of Hot, Hot Chicken, a cultural history of Nashville hot chicken, and A Most Tolerant Little Town, the forgotten story of the first school to attempt court-mandated desegregation in the wake of Brown v. Board, she is especially interested in the politics of memory and the power of stories to illuminate why injustice persists in America today. She lives in Nashville. 

Other non-fiction finalists were Margaret Renkl for essay collection The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year, and Brooks Lamb for Love for the Land: Lessons from Farmers Who Persist in Place.  

Poetry: Denton Loving, for Tamp – Loving lives on a farm near the historic Cumberland Gap, where Tennessee, Kentucky and Virginia come together. He is the author of the poetry collections Crimes Against Birds (Main Street Rag) and Tamp (Mercer University Press). He is also the editor of Seeking Its Own Level, an anthology of writings about water (MotesBooks). 

Other poetry finalists were Shuly Xochitl Cawood for Something So Good It Can Never Be Enough, and Julie Summer for Meridian: Poems. 

Humanities Tennessee, formerly the Tennessee Humanities Council, is the state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the Library of Congress Tennessee Center for the Book. •

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