The Department of English and Philosophy at Murray State University is pleased to announce the continuation of The Clinton and Mary Opal Moore Appalachian Writer’s Residency and this year’s author recipient, Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle, who will read from her work on Tuesday, September 12 at 7:30pm in the Clara Eagle Gallery (6th floor, Doyle Price Fine Arts). The reading is free and open to the public.
The residency was originally established for 2017-2022 with gifts from Shirley Moore Menendez, John C. Moore, Tom Moore, Nancy Moore Waldrop and Jayne Moore Waldrop in honor of their late parents and their family’s eastern Kentucky roots. Thanks to the continued generosity of the Moore siblings, the Clinton and Mary Opal Moore Appalachian Writer-in-Residence will continue through 2026.
This year’s recipient is Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle, whose debut novel, Even As We Breathe (University Press of Kentucky, 2020) was 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.
An enrolled citizen of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, Clapsaddle holds degrees from Yale University and the College of William and Mary. Clapsaddle’s work has appeared in Yes! Magazine, Lit Hub, Smoky Mountain Living Magazine, South Writ Large, Our State Magazine and The Atlantic. After serving as executive director of the Cherokee Preservation Foundation, she taught high school for over a dozen years. She is the former co-editor of the Journal of Cherokee Studies and serves on the Board of Directors for the Museum of the Cherokee Indian 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 Museum of the Cherokee Indian, Clapsaddle launched Confluence: An Indigenous Writers’ Workshop Series that seeks to bring indigenous writers to the Qualla Boundary (Cherokee, North Carolina) to work with aspiring writers several times throughout the year.