Winners of the Weatherford Award for Best Books About Appalachia

• 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
• 2021 – Fiction: Jocelyn Johnson, My Monticello
• 2021 – Poetry: Marianne Worthington, The Girl Singer
• 2021 – Non-Fiction: William H. Turner, The Harlan Renaissance: Stories of Black Lives in Appalachian Coal Towns
• 2022 – Fiction: Barbara Kingsolver, Demon Copperhead
• 2022 – Poetry: Annie Woodford, Where You Come From is Gone 
• 2022 – Nonfiction: Luke Manget, Ginseng Diggers
• 2023 – Fiction: Monic Ductan, Daughters of Muscadine: Stories, 
• 2023 – Poetry: Bill King, Bloodroot and Michael Garrigan, River, Amen
• 2023 – Nonfiction: Erica Abrams Locklear, Appalachia on the Table: Representing Mountain Food & People
• 2024 – Fiction: Karen Spears Zacharias, No Perfect Mothers and Taylor Brown, Rednecks
• 2024 – Poetry: Raye Hendrix, What Good is Heaven
• 2024 – Nonfiction: Connie Banta, Kristin Devault-Juelfs, Destinee Harper, Katy Ryan, and Ellen Skirvin, This Book is Free and Yours to Keep: Notes from the Appalachian Prison Book Project
  
• 2025 – Fiction: Wes Browne, They All Fall the Same
• 2025 – Poetry: Hilda Downer, Had I a Dove: Appalachian Poets on the Helene Flood
• 2025 – Nonfiction: Denali Sai Nalamalapu, Holler: A Graphic Memoir of Rural Resistance 

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