Posted on November 27, 2020 at 8:00 AM by Sadye Scott-Hainchek

Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle’s debut novel is noteworthy in more than one way.

First, it’s titled Even As We Breathe … and has come out in the midst of a pandemic where we’re discouraged heavily from breathing near each other.

But more enduringly, Clapsaddle believes she’s the first traditionally published author to also be an enrolled member of Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians.

That ancestry inspired her novel in multiple ways.

Clapsaddle is not only half Cherokee but also teaches at a high school with a student population that's 30 percent Native, she told NPR.

And so she wanted to write something that those students could identify with.

(Mission accomplished, according to at least one of them.)

Learn more about Even As We Breathe and its reception around the literary world on NPR.

Categories: Author Interview