Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle is an enrolled citizen of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians and resides in Qualla, NC, with her husband, Evan, and sons, Ross and Charlie. She holds degrees from Yale University and the College of William and Mary. Her debut novel, Even As We Breathe, was released by the University Press of Kentucky in 2020, a finalist for the Weatherford Award, and named one of NPR’s Best Books of 2020. In 2021, it received the Thomas Wolfe Memorial Literary Award. Her first novel manuscript, Going to Water, won the Morning Star Award for Creative Writing from the Native American Literature Symposium (2012) and was 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. After serving as executive director of the Cherokee Preservation Foundation, Annette returned to teaching at Swain County High School for over a dozen years. She is the former co-editor of the Journal of Cherokee Studies. She serves on the Board of Directors for the Museum of the Cherokee People and is the President of the Board of Trustees for the North Carolina Writers Network. Clapsaddle established Bird Words, LLC in 2022 and works as an independent contractor and consultant. In 2023, in partnership with the Museum of the Cherokee People, Clapsaddle launched Confluence: An Indigenous Writers’ Workshop Series that seeks to bring indigenous writers to the Qualla Boundary (Cherokee, NC) to work with aspiring writers.
