2025 Appalachian Heritage Writer in Residence – Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle
Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle
2025 Appalachian Heritage Writer-in-Residence
North Carolina-based author Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle is the 2025 Appalachian Heritage Writer-in-Residence (AHWIR). Clapsaddle will hold this position from March 2025 to January 2026.听As the writer-in-residence, she will help edit the 2026 volume of the 鈥淎nthology of Appalachian Writers,鈥� featuring fiction, poetry, essays, and art inspired by or connected to her work. Her multifaceted writing career will serve as the basis for the AHWIR programming through Shepherd鈥檚 Center for Appalachian Studies and Communities.听
Clapsaddle is an enrolled citizen of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians and lives in Cherokee, North Carolina with her husband, Evan, and their sons, Ross and Charlie. A graduate of Yale University and the College of William & Mary, Clapsaddle is the author of (UPK, 2020), the first novel published by an enrolled citizen of the Eastern Band of Cherokee. The novel was a finalist for the Weatherford Award, winner of the 2021 Thomas Wolfe Memorial Literary Award, and named one of NPR鈥檚 Best Books of 2020.
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鈥檚 work has appeared in numerous publications, including Yes! Magazine, Lit Hub, The Atlantic, Salvation South, Bon App茅tit, and Travel + Leisure.
Clapsaddle鈥檚 recent and upcoming contributions appear in (UPK, 2023), (UPK, 2024), and The Devil鈥檚 Done Come Back: New Ghost Tales from North Carolina (Blair, 2025).
A dedicated educator, Clapsaddle returned to Swain County High School to teach for over a decade after serving as Executive Director of the Cherokee Preservation Foundation. She now leads Bird Words, LLC, a consulting and writing business she founded in 2022. In partnership with the Museum of the Cherokee People, she launched Confluence: An Indigenous Writers鈥� Workshop Series, which brings Indigenous authors to the Qualla Boundary to mentor emerging writers.
Clapsaddle currently serves as President of the Board of Trustees for the North Carolina Writers鈥� Network and is a member of the Board of Directors for the Museum of the Cherokee People.
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The Appalachian Heritage Writer-in-Residence Project is made possible with financial support from the , in partnership with the , the , the Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi, the Shepherdstown Public Library, the Scarborough Society, the West Virginia Division of Culture and History, the West Virginia Commission on the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.