Huntington Times

Marshall University will host a reading by author Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle as part of its A.E. Stringer Visiting Writer Series. The event is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, March 26, at the Drinko Library Atrium, located on the library's third floor. Attendance is free and open to the public.

Clapsaddle, an enrolled citizen of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians from Qualla, North Carolina, has notable academic credentials with degrees from Yale University and the College of William and Mary. She authored "Even As We Breathe," which was a finalist for the Weatherford Award and recognized as one of NPR’s Best Books of 2020. In 2021, it received the Thomas Wolfe Memorial Literary Award.

Her initial novel manuscript, "Going to Water," won the Morning Star Award for Creative Writing from the Native American Literature Symposium in 2012 and was a finalist for the PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction in 2014.

Clapsaddle's work has been featured in various publications including Yes! Magazine, Lit Hub, Salvation South, South Writ Large, Our State Magazine, Bon Appétit, Travel + Leisure Magazine, and The Atlantic. Her professional roles have included executive director of the Cherokee Preservation Foundation and teacher at Swain County High School. She also served as co-editor of the Journal of Cherokee Studies and is on the Museum of the Cherokee People Board of Directors. Additionally, she is president of the Board of Trustees for the North Carolina Writers Network.

In 2022, Clapsaddle founded Bird Words LLC as an independent contractor and consultant. She played a role in launching Confluence: An Indigenous Writers’ Workshop Series to support indigenous writers in North Carolina's Qualla Boundary.

Dr. Sara Henning, coordinator of Marshall's Stringer Visiting Writers Series who organized this event stated: “I am beyond excited for Annette Clapsaddle’s visit... Clapsaddle’s 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.”

The event is supported by Marshall University's Department of English, College of Liberal Arts, and University Libraries.