2024 Workshop Leaders
Monic Ductan, Fiction
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.
Maurice Manning, Poetry
Maurice Manning has published eight collections of poetry, the most recent being Snakedoctor (2023). His first book, Lawrence Booth’s Book of Visions (2001), was selected by W.S. Merwin for the Yale Series of Younger Poets. His fourth book, The Common Man (2010), was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His poems have been published in various journals and magazines, including Southern Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, New Yorker, and Time. He and producer Steve Cody have also published ten episodes of The Grinnin’ Possum Podcast, featuring original poetry, old-time music, and history. Manning teaches at Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky, and for the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers in Swannanoa, North Carolina.
David Brill, Nonfiction
David Brill is the author of Into the Mist: Tales of Death, Disaster, Mishaps and Misdeeds, Misfortune, and Mayhem in the Great Smoky Mountains (GSMA 2016). His articles on science, ecology, the environment, business, health, fitness, parenting, and adventure travel have appeared in more than 25 national and regional magazines, including Smokies Life journal. He has written extensively about Great Smoky Mountains National Park and published five nonfiction books, including As Far as the Eye Can See: Reflections of an Appalachian Trail Hiker (1990); A Separate Place: A Family, a Cabin in the Woods, and a Journey of Love and Spirit (2001); and Desire and Ice: A Search for Perspective atop Denali (2002). When he arrives at Tremont in October, he will be well underway with volume two of Into the Mist.
Frank X Walker, Guest Author
Frank X Walker is the first African American Kentucky Poet Laureate. A native of Danville and Professor of English, African American and Africana Studies at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, Walker coined the term “Affrilachia” and co-founded the Affrilachian Poets. Turn Me Loose: The Unghosting of Medgar Evers won the 2014 NAACP Image Award for Poetry and the Black Caucus American Library Association Honor Award for Poetry. Honors also include a 2004 Lannan Literary Fellowship for Poetry, the 2008 and 2009 Denny C. Plattner Award for Outstanding Poetry in Appalachian Heritage, the 2013 West Virginia Humanities Council’s Appalachian Heritage Award, and the 2020 Donald Justice Award for Poetry from the Fellowship of Southern Writers. He has written 13 collections of poetry and the children’s book A is for Appalachia.
2024 Workshop Leaders
Monic Ductan, Fiction
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.
Maurice Manning, Poetry
Maurice Manning has published eight collections of poetry, the most recent being Snakedoctor (2023). His first book, Lawrence Booth’s Book of Visions (2001), was selected by W.S. Merwin for the Yale Series of Younger Poets. His fourth book, The Common Man (2010), was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His poems have been published in various journals and magazines, including Southern Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, New Yorker, and Time. He and producer Steve Cody have also published ten episodes of The Grinnin’ Possum Podcast, featuring original poetry, old-time music, and history. Manning teaches at Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky, and for the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers in Swannanoa, North Carolina.
David Brill, Nonfiction
David Brill is the author of Into the Mist: Tales of Death, Disaster, Mishaps and Misdeeds, Misfortune, and Mayhem in the Great Smoky Mountains (GSMA 2016). His articles on science, ecology, the environment, business, health, fitness, parenting, and adventure travel have appeared in more than 25 national and regional magazines, including Smokies Life journal. He has written extensively about Great Smoky Mountains National Park and published five nonfiction books, including As Far as the Eye Can See: Reflections of an Appalachian Trail Hiker (1990); A Separate Place: A Family, a Cabin in the Woods, and a Journey of Love and Spirit (2001); and Desire and Ice: A Search for Perspective atop Denali (2002). When he arrives at Tremont in October, he will be well underway with volume two of Into the Mist.
Frank X Walker, Guest Author
Frank X Walker is the first African American Kentucky Poet Laureate. A native of Danville and Professor of English, African American and Africana Studies at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, Walker coined the term “Affrilachia” and co-founded the Affrilachian Poets. Turn Me Loose: The Unghosting of Medgar Evers won the 2014 NAACP Image Award for Poetry and the Black Caucus American Library Association Honor Award for Poetry. Honors also include a 2004 Lannan Literary Fellowship for Poetry, the 2008 and 2009 Denny C. Plattner Award for Outstanding Poetry in Appalachian Heritage, the 2013 West Virginia Humanities Council’s Appalachian Heritage Award, and the 2020 Donald Justice Award for Poetry from the Fellowship of Southern Writers. He has written 13 collections of poetry and the children’s book A is for Affrilachia.
