Clapsaddle is an enrolled citizen of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians and resides in Qualla, North Carolina. She holds degrees from Yale University and the College of William and Mary. She is author of Even As We Breathe, a finalist for the Weatherford Award, named one of NPR’s Best Books of 2020. In 2021, it was the recipient of the Thomas Wolfe Memorial Literary Award.
Her first novel manuscript, Going to Water, 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’s work has appeared in Yes! Magazine, Lit Hub, Salvation South, South Writ Large, Our State Magazine, Bon Appétit, Travel + Leisure Magazine, and The Atlantic. She has served as executive director of the Cherokee Preservation Foundation and as a teacher at Swain County High School. 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 Writers’ Workshop Series, to bring indigenous writers to the Qualla Boundary in North Carolina to work with aspiring writers.
“I am beyond excited for Annette Clapsaddle’s visit,” said Dr. Sara Henning, who coordinates the Stringer Visiting Writers Series at Marshall and organized the reading event. “As both a novelist and educator, 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.”
All are welcome to the event, which is presented by Marshall with support from the Department of English, the College of Liberal Arts and University Libraries.