Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle is seen in this undated photo. She is the feature author for Marshall UniversityƵs Visiting Writers Series event on Wednesday, March 26, 2025.
Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle is seen in this undated photo. She is the feature author for Marshall UniversityƵs Visiting Writers Series event on Wednesday, March 26, 2025.
HUNTINGTON Ƶ Marshall UniversityƵs A.E. Stringer Visiting Writer Series will present a reading with author Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, March 26, in the Drinko Library Atrium, on the libraryƵs third floor.
Clapsaddle is an enrolled citizen of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians and resides in Qualla, North Carolina, according to a release announcing the event. She holds degrees from Yale University and the College of William and Mary.
ƵI am beyond excited for Annette ClapsaddleƵs visit,Ƶ Dr. Sara Henning, coordinator of the Stringer Visiting Writers Series at Marshall and organizer of the reading event, said in the release.
ƵƵ both a novelist and educator, ClapsaddleƵs work not only occupies a crucial space in the canon of Indigenous Appalachian literature, but she joins writers such as Louise Erdrich, N. Scott Momaday, and Leslie Marmon Silko as a powerful Indigenous voice on the national stage.Ƶ
She is author of ƵEven Ƶ We Breathe,Ƶ a finalist for the Weatherford Award, named one of NPRƵs Best Books of 2020. In 2021, it was the recipient of the Thomas Wolfe Memorial Literary Award.
Her first novel manuscript, ƵGoing to Water,Ƶ is winner of the Morning Star Award for Creative Writing from the Native American Literature Symposium (2012) and a finalist for the PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction (2014).
Clapsaddle has served as executive director of the Cherokee Preservation Foundation and as a teacher at Swain County High School, the release states. Clapsaddle is also a former co-editor of the Journal of Cherokee Studies, and she serves on the Museum of the Cherokee People Board of Directors. She also is president of the Board of Trustees for the North Carolina Writers Network.
In 2022, Clapsaddle established Bird Words LLC, working as an independent contractor and consultant. She also helped launch Confluence: An Indigenous WritersƵ Workshop Series, to bring indigenous writers to the Qualla Boundary in North Carolina to work with aspiring writers, according to the release.
The event, presented by Marshall with support from the Department of English, the College of Liberal Arts and University Libraries, is free and open to the public.
ClapsaddleƵs work has appeared in Yes! Magazine, Lit Hub, Salvation South, South Writ Large, Our State Magazine, Bon Appétit, Travel + Leisure Magazine, and The Atlantic.
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