News

By Eliza Souers

The Lee University 2020-21 Writer’s Series will continue by welcoming Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle, novelist and member of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (EBCI), on Wednesday, Feb. 24, at 5 p.m. The event, hosted by Lee’s Department of Language and Literature, will be presented via livestream.

“We are so glad that Ms. Clapsaddle is coming to share with us her love of writing and her novel about young Cherokees working at a luxury resort in Appalachia during World War II,” said Dr. William Woolfitt, associate professor of creative writing at Lee.

Clapsaddle will be reading from her debut novel, “Even as We Breathe,” which has been described by author Charles Frazier as “a fresh, welcome, and much needed addition to the fiction of the Appalachian South.”

Along with “Even as We Breathe,” Clapsaddle is the author of her first novel manuscript, “Going to War,” and numerous essays and blog posts. She has been awarded The Morning Star Award for Creative Writing from the Native American Literature Symposium and was a finalist for the 2014 PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction.

Clapsaddle currently teaches English and Cherokee Studies at Swain County High School and serves on the Board of Trustees for the North Carolina Writers Network. She has also served as executive director of the Cherokee Preservation Foundation (National Board Certified) and is the former co-editor of the Journal of Cherokee Studies. She holds degrees from Yale University and the College of William and Mary and is the first from the EBCI to publish a novel.

The event is free to all and will take place virtually on Zoom.

For more information on Clapsaddle, visit www.asaunookeclapsaddle.com/.

For more information on the Writer’s Series or to access the event on Zoom, email Woolfitt at [email protected].

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