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This Tennessee author grew up near the Appalachian Mountains.

Her parents didn't finish high school.

Her grandfather couldn't read, but she earned a PhD in English.

She writes her story sitting on the floor, eating lemonheads.

Straight ahead on Tennessee Writes, we're meeting author Monic Ductan.

We'll find out about her journey to becoming an author and college English professor and about her book The Daughters of Muscadine.

Grab a fresh cup of coffee and a comfy chair because Tennessee Writes starts right now.

Books about Tennessee.

Books that come from Tennessee authors.

Books and stories with a Tennessee twist.

West Tennessee PBS presents Tennessee Writes.

Welcome to Tennessee Writes, the show that gets up close and personal with Tennessee authors.

My name is Peter Noll.

This is the show that goes beyond the book to learn about its author, from where they grew up to where their ideas come from.

They will even offer advice if you want to write your own book.

Plus, they try and beat the clock in answering questions in the Lightning Round.

Tennessee Writes welcomes author Monic Ductan.

She grew up in a small town in Northern Georgia, but life has brought her to Tennessee to teach.

She has a PhD and teaches English at Tennessee Tech in Cookeville.

Tennessee Writes welcomes Monic Ductan.

Thank you for coming on Tennessee Writes.

Thank you.

Have a seat and let's talk.

We start every show finding out about you as a person, where you came from, your family, your life.

Give us your elevator spiel when somebody says, tell me about yourself.

Okay.

Well, I'm from the south.

My family, I always tell people my family has been in Georgia for probably at least 200 years.

On my mom's side, I was born in Georgia.

My mother, her parents and grandparents and great-grandparents.

We've been in the south for a really long time.

All of my education is in creative writing.

My undergrad, my MFA, and my PhD is all in creative writing.

I did my undergrad at Georgia State in Atlanta.

I'm from a really small town about an hour northeast of Atlanta.

Commerce is the name of the town.

It's just north of Athens.

I did my undergrad at Georgia State.

Got married, had a baby, got divorced.

Then did a master's in Middle Georgia at Georgia College in Milledgeville.

Then did my PhD at University of Southern Mississippi down in Hattiesburg.

How did you end up at Cookeville?

In my last year of my PhD program, I was on the job market.

I applied for various jobs around the country.

I got an offer from Tennessee Tech.

That's what brought us here.

Had you ever thought, I'm going to live in Middle Tennessee?

I had never thought that before.

Like I said, my family's been in the south forever.

It's really not that different from North Georgia.

Could you ever imagine living up north amongst the Yankees?

Why not?

Why not?

[laughs] Nothing against Yankees.

It would be something different for me, but I would try it.

Yes.

Have you.. I have.

Very briefly, I lived in Staten Island, New York for less than a year.

Yes, definitely, it's been a winter there.

-It's really cold.

-Thumbs up?

Thumbs down?

I didn't dislike it so much.

I'm used to the heat, but I can adjust.

Yes.

Now, education, like having a higher education, wasn't in your family's history.

You said your parents did not finish high school, grandfather couldn't read.

What about you said, I'm going to go on to college?

I'm going to get not only my degree, I'm going to get a master's, I'm going to get a PhD.

I think college was just expected.

It's what my mother and father expected of me, so that's why I did it.

Then I didn't really know at the time that I was getting my undergrad that I would go on for the master's and the PhD, but I just felt like if I wanted to be a college teacher, the PhD would open a lot of doors for me.

Wow.

Let's go back to when you were in third grade.

Did you always love writing and say, "I want to be a writer?"

I always loved reading, and that's the gateway to writing.

I didn't really think about being a writer until I got to college.

I started taking writing workshops, and then I decided that was what I wanted to do.

My research said that you got your PhD as you were a single working mom.

Is that true?

Yes.

Tell us about that.

It was tough.

It was one of the hardest things t.. My son was-- He's an adult now.

He just turned 18.

When I was in my writing programs, I started my MFA when he was in, I think, kindergarten or first grade.

Then I finished my PhD when he was, I think, about to start middle school.

I had a part-time job teaching while I was getting my degrees.

Then I also had a part-time job working at a local library as a library assistant.

I was just really lucky that my mother was able to move in with us and take care of my son while I was attending classes and working so much.

It was really tough, but I got through it.

Has your family read your book?

Some of them have, yes.

Okay.

Your mom?

No.

Okay.

Your son?

Has your son?

No.

No.

Do you want them to?

Extended family have read it.. My cousins, an aunt of mine, yes.

What was their feedback?

They liked it.

Then again, they're really supportive anyway, so they're going to like anything I write, I guess.

Yes.

You talk about at-risk youth and how we need to support at-risk youth in past interviews I've read.

Tell me about that.

At-risk youth?

Are you talking specifically about some of the characters in the book?

No, just in general.

Yes, in general.

About supporting maybe kids that don't think I can get to college or I should go to college.

How we need to support education.

I think it's important for students, especially someone like where I come from as you pointed out, coming from a family that's not so educated.

I was not really expected to go to college by people in the larger world, but within my family, that was expected of me.

It's like Monic's going to college, period.

Right.

I think it's important to have that sort of family support and that family unit and structure.

I think with government, yes, we definitely should do more with education.

I know across the country, a lot of budget cuts to educational programs and to arts programs, and it's just really heartbreaking.

I feel like those are things that are really necessary for not just children, but adults, too.

As higher education institutions have been struggling with budgets, I've read about various colleges that have been cutting writing programs and English.

Some of these mainstays, how do you feel about that?

Awful.

[laughs] That's the constant .. People asking you, "Why does literature matter?

Why should students read books?"

I think it's to broaden people's perspectives and to consider other points of view.

That's what literature, I think, does for us.

I'm sure other people have different answers, but for me, that's one of the most important things.

Yes, it's really disheartening, I think, because so much, I think, is the focus is on STEM and the sciences and not so much on humanities.

Do you think the pendulum will eventually swing back?

I hope so.

I can't guarantee it, obviously, but I hope that it would.

Let's go back to Commerce, Georgia, your hometown.

Small town, how big is it?

When I lived there, it was about 5,000 people.

Now, I think they have maybe around 6,000.

How did that small town life influence your writings and you as a person?

People always ask which stories in the book are based on something true, if any of them are based on something true.

I think there's a little bit of me in every one of the stories.

I'm inspired a lot by the small town because this book, there are nine stories in it.

Eight of them are set in the same small town called Muscadine.

It's very loosely based on the town that I grew up in Commerce.

There's a place in here that I referenced more than once, called the Shoals.

It's based on Hurricane Shoals, where I grew up and spent a lot of time in the summer with my family.

Little places like that appear again and again, and they're based on my own real experiences.

Just the life in a small town.

I don't always explain in there how the different characters are related.

There are certain last names that come up again and again.

I wanted it to feel like life in a small town.

If you went to Commerce, Georgia, you might hear the same last names over and over again.

Then, if you live there for a while or your family lives there for a while, you'll start to make those connections.

Oh, okay, I know this person, and this is how I know this other person.

Yes.

I come from a small town in Minnesota, and same thing.

There's those names that go back multi-generations in that small community.

It was a town of about 5,000 people in rural Minnesota.

You even referenced different characters that aren't from that town, that they moved there.

They're always sort of an outsider.

Tell me about that.

Yes, I guess I don't have a lot of an outsider's perspective, because my family is so rooted in North Georgia, my parents on both sides, from Commerce and Jefferson, Georgia, and people have known my family forever.

We're the sort of people that if I go into town, somebody might look at me and say, "Okay, you're related to so-and-so, I know that."

For the outsider, I think maybe the experience might be that they just don't have that sort of long history with everybody.

I feel like there's a real benefit to being one of those generational families in a small town.

You know exactly who to talk to, where to go, how to get things, because we all have these connections to people.

When I moved to West Tennessee, one of the first things I noticed was everyone asked what county are you from?

It's all about what county are you from?

Who are your people?

Who are your people?

Exactly.

Is that a southern thing, because I never remember getting asked that up north?

I think maybe.

I think it's a small-town thing and maybe a southern thing that people assume that if you've both lived here for a while, then they should know the people that you know, or they should know your family.

You mentioned in past interviews that your writing style is southern or Appalachian.

Explain to me what that means.

In past interviews, I remember one of the first interviews I did was for a podcast a couple of years ago, and somebody was asking me about the dialect.

I blanked out for a second.

I was like, "What do you mean the dialect?"

She was giving me examples.

I just went, oh, you mean the way that people talk in the dialogue.

I think that is just me being from a small town, writing the way that people I know speak, like my mother or my cousins.

It's really just about listening a lot and just having an ear, and just transcribing what you've heard.

When I was in college and was learning to write for broadcast television, I was taught you write how people talk.

You don't write how people read.

It was hard to go from writing for broadcast journalism, where incomplete sentences and dot, dot, dots, and then writing a real paper for an English course, where that was not proper English.

Did you have to go back and go, "This isn't proper English, but it's how people talk?"

Yes, exactly.

That's exactly what it was.

I wasn't always concerned with trying to get it grammatica.. I was just trying to be true to the voices that I knew.

I was really lucky to be in a lot of good writing workshops where people would point out things that they think you're doing well, but then also give suggestions for what you could imp.. or what you could do differently.

I would say most of the stories in the book have been workshopped at some point.

How well do you take criticism?

Better than I used to.

[chuckles] I'll never forget my first wo.. when I was in graduate school.

The focus is very much on criticism.

Yes, you might get a couple of compliments, but it's mostly on telling you, you're doing this wrong, or you need to fix this part, or this part doesn't make any sense.

That first year was really hard for me, taking the criticism.

As time wore on, I just got really used to it.

[music] Let's dive into your book, The Daughters of Muscadine.

This is an award-winning book.

Tell us about that.

Yes, it won two book awards.

It won the Weatherford Award.

It's an award given by Berea College in Kentucky for the best book of fiction about Appalachia.

I say Appalachia.

I know it's Appalachia.

[chuckles] I'm saying it wrong, but I think both pro.. Then I also won the Tennessee Book Award from Humanities Tennessee.

Tell us about your book.

Yes, it's a group of short stories.

It's nine stories.

Each of them could be read separately, so it's nine different stories.

Most of them are set in the small town of Muscadine, Georgia.

There are a couple of characters-- Fictional town.

Right.

Fictional town of Muscadine, Georgia, because there is a Muscadine in Alabama, but there's not one in Georgia, as far as I know.

It's nine stories.

Most of them are set in the same small .. Occasionally, one or two of the characters will appear in more than one story, so they're connected by place.

I do want to give a shout-out to Dr.

Lynn Alexander.

She is a retired from the University of Tennessee, Martin, and she's on the WLJD Board of Directors.

She brought you to our attention in your book.

Thank you, Dr.

Alexander, for recommending Monic to come on.

You mentioned it's a series of short stories, but they are all intertwined, like some of the characters you'll read about in multiple stories.

Did you purposely try and tie them all together?

They're separate, but they're all connected.

Yes and no.

[chuckles] I would say half of th.. as a student when I was in my MFA and PhD programs, and then the other stories I wrote since I moved to Tennessee and started teaching at Tennessee Tech.

I wrote them all separately.

Then, when I was trying to think about putting them together as a book, the editor that I was working with said, "What is the thing that's holding them together?"

I said, I feel like they're all about some sort of estrangement.

In the first story, it's a young boy who is trying to be closer with his father.

He feels this family rejection.

Then in another story, it's two sisters who have very different personalities, and they're trying to rekindle-- Kasha and it's Ansley?

Yes, Kasha and Ansley.

Every story, I feel like there's some sort of estrangement between the main character and someone else.

Then I also was telling the editor, I feel like all the stories could be said in the same town.

He was like, well, maybe you should do that.

I went back and I did some rewriting.

I created this town called Muscadine, and I thought about how I could link the stories based on that.

What I really found fascinating about your story is because so many times, at least for me, you watch Hallmark movies.

My family's not like that.

Life is not a Hallmark movie.

Families can be messy.

You always hear the families that go on a cruise together and things like that.

A lot of people is like, I couldn't imagine going on a cruise with my family, but some people do.

Your book really explored life gets messy.

Families are messy.

It's never easy.

I thought that was refreshing.

Did you try and do that?

Some of the stories just sort of end, and it's not wrapped up with a bow, and everyone lives happily ever after.

When people ask what I write, I say, I guess it's literary, but also realism.

I try to be as realistic as I can.

As you pointed out, not every story has a happy ending.

I feel like life is that way sometimes.

I just try to be as realistic as I can be and as true to the story.

Like the two sisters, I wasn't sure what was going to happen at the end.

It just sort of ended.

It's sort of like, I want more.

I wanted more from them and from the story.

I guess maybe that's the goal of a writer is to leave you wanting more.

How do you want readers to feel after they read your book?

I hope that it will move them in some way, that at least a couple of the stories will make them feel something, whether it's sadness or joy, but I want them to feel something.

Do you think any of these short stories are going to become their own novel?

I've thought about it- Expand upon that.

-a couple of times.

I've thought about it.

A couple of them, I think, cou.. You mentioned the story of Kasha and Ansley.

I could just as easily continue with that story and see how the two of them wind up in the end.

The first story also could be one.

There's also one called Daughter about a mother and an estranged daughter that could also be a novel.

Maybe I will go back at some point and lengthen a couple of them.

[music] We've come to the segment of Tennessee Writes called the Lightning Round, where we ask our authors a series of book and writing-related questions and see how many they can answer in two minutes.

The key is to answer as many as possible.

If you can't think of an answer, say pass.

Are you ready to play?

Yes.

Okay.

Two minutes on the clock.

We'll start after my first question.

How many pages would the book about your life be?

Probably 200.

What animal best represents your book?

Pass.

What is your favorite book of.. Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison.

What's your least favorite book of all time?

Pass.

How often do you check your Amazon or Goodreads book reviews and ratings?

Probably once a week.

What is the name of the font used in your book?

I don't know.

I'm not sure.

If you could pick a celebrity to narrate you.. who would it be?

There's a really good audiobook narrator, Bonnie Turpin.

What's one book you are reading right now?

Fingersmith by Sarah Waters.

What food item or drink most helps you write?

Lemonheads.

[?]

If you could have a book .. in the world, where would it be?

New York.

Name the last book you finished reading.

Heavy by Kiese Laymon.

What author, living or dead, would you most like to have dinner with?

Pass.

Do you write your books on a computer or by hand?

Computer.

What book have you read multiple times?

Probably Dolores Claiborne by Stephen King.

How many times?

Five or six.

Do you prefer paper books or e-books?

Paper.

I like both, actually.

What actor would you want to star in the movie based on your book?

Viola Davis.

What is your favorite place to read books?

On my sofa.

What is your least favorite place to read bo.. On an airplane.

On average, how many books do you read in one year?

Probably 20.

Do you prefer pens or pencils?

Pencil.

What book has most influenced your life?

Pass.

Name an author you most admire.

There are so many.

Pass.

What's your favorite magazine.. [music] Monic, we always love to hear an author read their own words that they wrote.

Would you mind reading a short section from your book?

Sure, thank you.

I'm going to read a couple of pages from the middle of the book.

It's from a story called Daughter.

It says, Daughter.

I'm standing in line at the pharmacy when I see a younger version of myself behind the counter.

She's about 20 years old and wears a white lab coat.

When she looks up, I put my face down and worry that she's looking my way.

Casually, I step to the side and hide behind the man in front of me.

Backing up slowly, I knock into a shelf and bottles of vitamins rattle as they fall onto the carpet.

With my back to the girl at the counter, I pick up the bottles and quietly set them back on the shelf.

Never mind my Adderall prescription.

I can pick it up tomorrow.

Heading for the front entrance, I glance over my shoulder to see the girl counting change for a customer.

Out in my car, I take a Tylenol for what is becoming.. I swallow half a bottle of water and put on the air conditioning as the car idles.

I was only 19 when I got pregnant by my boyfriend, and I didn't realize it until we'd already planned to break up.

At the time, I was a college student taking a class with Dr.

Dunkirk, one of those professors who communicated way too much to her students.

She often invited our poetry class, all eight of us, to her home for dinner, where we sat around her big dining table and read poetry.

She joked about jumping on her husband whenever she was ovulating.

One time, tears welled in her eyes as we sat under the chandelier that flashed yellow light off the glasses, the silverware, and Dr.

Dunkirk's cheeks.

She looked impossibly beautiful to me with her upright posture.

You don't often see a person so unashamed of their tears.

She showed vulnerability, too, when she reached out a shaky hand to pick up her water glass.

Later, Dr.

Dunkirk confided to me that she and her husband had been trying for years and had miscarried twice.

I'm 48, she told me.

It's probably too late for me.

A week later, I got my positive pregnancy test, and after that, I offered her my child.

In the parking lot of the pharmacy, I wait in my car, hoping to get a glimpse of the girl once the employees lock up and leave for the night.

I don't have to wait long.

The three women all come out together right at sunset.

The girl who looks like me has taken off the lab coat and now wears a bright red sweater that is extra vibrant against her dark brown skin.

Bye, Steph, one of the other women calls to her, and Steph waves.

My mind flashes back to the day I surrendered my daughter to Dr.

Dunkirk.

We're so grateful, Dunkirk gushed.

We'll give her your name, Stephanie, she promised me.

She and her husband cried over how perfect Stephanie was, and she was perfect, ahead of thick black hair and round, pinchable cheeks, not to mention her strong arms and legs.

In that moment, I wanted the child for myself.

No mother can look at a baby that small without feeling protective of it and wanting to snuggle and cuddle it.

[music] Monic, we always like to ask our authors about if someone sitting out there is thinking, I should write a book, what advice would you give them?

I would say the standard advice that everybody gives, read a lot and write a lot.

There's no substitute for either of those.

I would also recommend craft books, so books that teach you the basics of writing.

Something like a book called Writing Fiction by Janet Burroway.

I've used that in my writing classes before.

It goes over the basics of how to create a character, how to create a setting, those sorts of things.

Stephen King has a good memoir called On Writing that I recommend.

Mary Carr also has a good writing text.

Get a good craft book.

Try to write a little bit every day.

I know that not everybody's able to write 4 hours at a time, but if you could just set aside some time, maybe 20 minutes a day, you'll be really surprised at the end of a year how much writing you can get done just doing a little bit at a time.

Do you recommend journaling?

I remember in 8th grade, we all had to journal because that helps you get that momentum of writing every single day.

Do you keep a journal?

I do.

I have a journal I keep under m.. so sometimes I'll roll over in the middle of the night.

Do you have a little lock on it?

No, it's not locked.

[laughs] It's just a notebook with a pen.

I think journaling, sometimes you'll get ideas for a story or poetry that you're working on, just from journaling each day.

Write a lot and read a lot, and read books about writing.

Get a good writing group.

I belong to an online writers group.

We meet twice a month on Zoom, and we workshop each other's stories.

Get people that you trust, fellow writers.

You can find them online.

You can find them at local colleges or universities.

Just come up with a group of maybe four to six, a small group, so that each of you can share your writing with each other each month and get feedback.

That's really helpful.

Let's find out what's next.

You've got this award-winning book out.

Is there another book in the works?

I am working on a memoir right now.

It's a collection of essays about growing up in the South and about my family.

I recently took care of my mother as she was aging, and she passed away recently, so I have one of the essays about her.

It's about me and my family and about the South.

Your mom was living with you?

You really were part of that sandwich generation where you're raising your own child and taking care of an aging parent.

You're working full-time and writing books.

How can people stay in contact with you?

You have a website?

I do.

It's my first and last name, so.. Then my email is monicductan@yahoo.com.

How do you recommend people to get your book that want to get your book?

Online from University of Kentucky Press.

Go to their website, and it's available there.

Sadly, we've come to the end of this edition of Tennessee Writes.

We do want to thank Monic Ductan for coming on and sharing about herself and her book, The Daughters of Muscadine.

As a thank-you gift, we have a WLJT writer's kit briefcase with a notepad, pen, and latte mug to help you in your future writings.

Before you go, we have a favor to ask.

Would you sign your book for us?

Of course.

Great.

Thank you.

[music] Thank you.

For comments about today's show or to suggest a Tennessee author for a future program, email us at tennesseewrites@westnpbs.org.

Tennessee Writes, on air and streaming now.

[music] The program you've been watching was made possible through the generous financial support of West Tennessee PBS viewers like you.

Please visit westtnpbs.org and make a donation today, so that we can continue to make local programs like this possible.

Thank you.