Ep. 32 | Debut Authors
In today’s episode, host Kendra Winchester talks to debut authors Monic Ductan and Laura Leigh Morris.
Things Mentioned
Books Mentioned
Daughters of Muscadine by Monic Ductan
The Stone Catchers by Laura Leigh Morris
Mama Said by Kristen Gentry
Deep Ruts by Julie Rae Powers
The Sound of Holding Your Breath by Natalie Sypolt
Horsepower by Joy Priest
The Prettiest Star by Carter Sickels
No Son of Mine by Jonathan Corcoran
Another Appalachia by Neema Avashia
Dirt Songs by Karie Hunter-Seymour
Guest Info
(c) Monic Ductan
Monic Ductan was born and raised in Georgia and now lives in Cookeville, Tennessee. She teaches literature and creative writing at Tennessee Tech University. Her story collection Daughters of Muscadine (2023) focuses on a group of working-class Black women and families in rural Georgia. She received an Individual Artist grant from the Tennessee Arts Commission in 2023. She also won the 2019 Denny C. Plattner Award for her essay “Fantasy Worlds” and the 2021 Love Merit Prize in the annual Stories That Need to Be Told contest from Tulip Tree Publishing. Her writing has appeared in Appalachian Review, Oxford American, Shenandoah, Kweli, Good River Review, River Styx, and is forthcoming in the anthology Troublesome Rising: A Thousand-Year Flood in Eastern Kentucky.
(c) Laura Leigh Morris
Laura Leigh Morris is the author of The Stone Catchers: A Novel (UP Kentucky, August 2024) and Jaws of Life: Stories (West Virginia UP, 2018). She lives in Greenville, South Carolina, where she teaches creative writing and literature at Furman University. Before that, she spent three years as the National Endowment for the Arts/Bureau of Prisons Artist-in-Residence at Bryan Federal Prison Camp in Bryan, Texas. She’s previously published short fiction in STORY Magazine, North American Review: Open Space, JMWW, Laurel Review, Redivider, and other journals and anthologies.
Originally from north central West Virginia, most of her fiction is set there. From the landscape to the rich variety of people to the long history of resource extraction, the region serves as a rich backdrop to both her life and her stories.
She is currently working on a new novel and a collection of short stories that she thinks of as uncanny domestics.
