A University of the West of Scotland (UWS) graduate and author has been named co-recipient of the prestigious Weatherford Award for her novel No Perfect Mothers.

Karen Spears Zacharias, who graduated in 2022 from UWS, was presented the 2024 Weatherford Award for Fiction for her novel, No Perfect Mothers, at the Appalachian Studies Association Conference at Tennessee Tech University in Cookeville. She shares the award with Taylor Brown author of Rednecks.

Karen is an American writer, a former journalist, and author of numerous books. She completed an MA in Creative Media Practice at University of the West Scotland’s Ayr Campus, and the novel was inspired, in part, from her time studying in Scotland.

“I am so very grateful to win this award from the Appalachian Studies Center,” said Karen.

The Weatherford Award is a lovely tribute to the place and the people and the language that has shaped me as a writer and as a thinker.”

No Perfect Mothers tells the story of Carrie Buck, a toddler abandoned by her father and taken from her mother, then put up for fostering. At age ten, Carrie was forced to leave school to work as a domestic. When Carrie turns up pregnant at seventeen and fearing their nephew’s assault of Carrie will be discovered, Carrie’s foster parents fraudulently commit her to the Virginia Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded. They claim custody of her infant daughter. Dr. Priddy, the colony’s superintendent, deceptively labels Carrie an imbecile, unfit to bear children. In pursuit of a legal argument granting states the right to forcibly sterilize individuals, he exploits her. No Perfect Mothers explores characters, historical and imagined, who over the late 1800s to the 1920s were parties to the infamous Buck v. Bell U.S. Supreme Court case of 1927.

Karen told us in an interview in March 2024: “As I was drafting the story, I was also working on my master’s at the University. The writing was influenced by my travels abroad, in particular by the town of Paisley. The character of Black Peter of Paisley is real, as is the town’s history throughout the novel.”

Here is what one judge had to say regarding her work: “I was unfamiliar with Carrie Buck’s story until reading Karen Spears Zacharias’s No Perfect Mothers. The book addresses so many problems faced by Appalachian families of that era, including poverty, sexual abuse, and the forced sterilization of women. It made me question the role of government and just how much power it should have over its citizens. I kept asking myself what I would do if I were in Carrie’s predicament. I’m glad Zacharias wrote this book.”

This is the second time Karen has been awarded the Weatherford. Her debut novel Mother of Rain was awarded the prize in 2014.

The Weatherford Award is presented annually by Berea College and the Appalachian Studies Association to works of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry that best illuminate the challenges, personalities, and unique qualities of the Appalachian South. The award – which was established in 1970 – commemorates the life and achievements of W.D. Weatherford, Sr., a pioneer and leading figure for many years in Appalachian development, youth work, and race relations, and of his son, Willis D. Weatherford, Jr., late Berea College President.

Karen Spears Zacharias is an American writer whose work focuses on women and justice. Karen taught First-Amendment Rights at Central Washington University and continues to teach at writing workshops around the country. She is the author of five previous works of non-fiction, including the true crime memoir A Silence of Mockingbirds, the story behind Oregon’s Karly’s Law. Zacharias lives in Redmond, Oregon. http://karenzach.com/