2023 Workshop Leaders
Richard Powers
Richard Powers has written 13 imaginative and emotionally charged novels that explore the effects of modern science and technology on society and the environment. His two most recent works—The Overstory and Bewilderment—are both partially set in the Great Smoky Mountains. Among his many awards, Powers has been granted the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship and his 2006 offering The Echo Maker won the National Book Award for Fiction. The Overstory won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the epic is currently being developed as a Netflix series. Residing part-time in Townsend, Tennessee, near Tremont, Powers has taught at the University of Illinois and Stanford University. He will be our guest novelist at the Tremont Writers Conference.
Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle, Fiction
Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle became the first enrolled citizen of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians to publish a novel in 2020 with the release of Even As We Breathe, which was a finalist for the Weatherford Award, one of NPR’s Best Books of 2020, and winner of the 2021 Thomas Wolfe Memorial Literary Award. Her work has been published in Smokies Life, Lit Hub, Smoky Mountain Living, South Writ Large, and The Atlantic. Clapsaddle was the executive director of the Cherokee Preservation Foundation and taught at Swain County High School. She is the former co-editor of the Journal of Cherokee Studies and serves on the board of trustees for the North Carolina Writers Network. With degrees from Yale University and the College of William and Mary, Clapsaddle resides in the Qualla Boundary on the edge of the Smokies.
Frank X Walker, Poetry
Frank X Walker is the first African American Kentucky Poet Laureate. A native of Danville and Professor of English, African American and Africana Studies at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, Walker coined the term “Affrilachia” and co-founded the Affrilachian Poets. Turn Me Loose: The Unghosting of Medgar Evers won the 2014 NAACP Image Award for Poetry and the Black Caucus American Library Association Honor Award for Poetry. Honors also include a 2004 Lannan Literary Fellowship for Poetry, the 2008 and 2009 Denny C. Plattner Award for Outstanding Poetry in Appalachian Heritage, the 2013 West Virginia Humanities Council’s Appalachian Heritage Award, and the 2020 Donald Justice Award for Poetry from the Fellowship of Southern Writers. His most recent of 11 poetry collections is Masked Man, Black: Pandemic & Protest Poems.
Janet McCue, Nonfiction
Janet McCue is a writer, researcher, and avid hiker and co-author with George Ellison of Back of Beyond: A Horace Kephart Biography, which won the Thomas Wolfe Memorial Literary Award shortly after its release by Great Smoky Mountains Association in 2019. She and Ellison have collaborated on several other Kephart publications, including the introduction to Camping and Woodcraft (2011) and the biographical chapter in the Horace Kephart Reader (2019). McCue’s interest in Kephart began with backpacking trips in the Smokies in the 1970s and continued throughout her career as a librarian at Cornell University, where she specialized in library administration and digital library development. She lives in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York, writing regularly about the beauty and bounty of the area.
2023 Workshop Leaders
Richard Powers
Richard Powers has written 13 imaginative and emotionally charged novels that explore the effects of modern science and technology on society and the environment. His two most recent works—The Overstory and Bewilderment—are both partially set in the Great Smoky Mountains. Among his many awards, Powers has been granted the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship and his 2006 offering The Echo Maker won the National Book Award for Fiction. The Overstory won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the epic is currently being developed as a Netflix series. Residing part-time in Townsend, Tennessee, near Tremont, Powers has taught at the University of Illinois and Stanford University. He will be our guest novelist at the Tremont Writers Conference.
Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle, Fiction
Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle became the first enrolled citizen of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians to publish a novel in 2020 with the release of Even As We Breathe, which was a finalist for the Weatherford Award, one of NPR’s Best Books of 2020, and winner of the 2021 Thomas Wolfe Memorial Literary Award. Her work has been published in Smokies Life, Lit Hub, Smoky Mountain Living, South Writ Large, and The Atlantic. Clapsaddle was the executive director of the Cherokee Preservation Foundation and taught at Swain County High School. She is the former co-editor of the Journal of Cherokee Studies and serves on the board of trustees for the North Carolina Writers Network. With degrees from Yale University and the College of William and Mary, Clapsaddle resides in the Qualla Boundary on the edge of the Smokies.
Frank X Walker, Poetry
Frank X Walker is the first African American Kentucky Poet Laureate. A native of Danville and Professor of English, African American and Africana Studies at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, Walker coined the term “Affrilachia” and co-founded the Affrilachian Poets. Turn Me Loose: The Unghosting of Medgar Evers won the 2014 NAACP Image Award for Poetry and the Black Caucus American Library Association Honor Award for Poetry. Honors also include a 2004 Lannan Literary Fellowship for Poetry, the 2008 and 2009 Denny C. Plattner Award for Outstanding Poetry in Appalachian Heritage, the 2013 West Virginia Humanities Council’s Appalachian Heritage Award, and the 2020 Donald Justice Award for Poetry from the Fellowship of Southern Writers. His most recent of 11 poetry collections is Masked Man, Black: Pandemic & Protest Poems.
Janet McCue, Nonfiction
Janet McCue is a writer, researcher, and avid hiker and co-author with George Ellison of Back of Beyond: A Horace Kephart Biography, which won the Thomas Wolfe Memorial Literary Award shortly after its release by Great Smoky Mountains Association in 2019. She and Ellison have collaborated on several other Kephart publications, including the introduction to Camping and Woodcraft (2011) and the biographical chapter in the Horace Kephart Reader (2019). McCue’s interest in Kephart began with backpacking trips in the Smokies in the 1970s and continued throughout her career as a librarian at Cornell University, where she specialized in library administration and digital library development. She lives in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York, writing regularly about the beauty and bounty of the area.
