Appalachian Symposium 2019

Dori Freeman is a singer and songwriter from Galax, Virginia. Her music blurs the finer lines of Americana and shines a new light on the legacy of traditional music. She brings a modern perspective - both lyrically and vocally - to the genre. Her sophomore album "Letters Never Read." was released in October, 2017.

Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle, an enrolled member of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (EBCI) resides in Qualla, North Carolina, with her husband, Evan, and their sons, Ross and Charlie. She holds degrees from Yale University and the College of William and Mary. Her first novel, Going to Water, is winner of the Morning Star Award for Creative Writing from the Native American Literature Symposium (2012), a finalist for the PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction (2014), and the 2017−2018 selection for Western Carolina University’s One Book program. Recent publications also include “Undertow” in Carolina Mountain Literary Festival Anthology: Ten Years of Festivals (Press 53, 2015), Naked Came the Leaf Peeper(Burning Bush Press, 2011), “It All Comes Out in the Wash” from Appalachian Heritage Quarterly (Berea College, 2009), and “Camouflage” from Night is Gone, Day Is Still Coming (Candlewick Press, 2003), and a series of bilingual children’s books published by the EBCI. After serving as executive director of the Cherokee Preservation Foundation, Annette (National Board Certified since 2012) returned to teaching English at Swain County High School. She is coeditor of the Journal of Cherokee Studies and writes bimonthly columns for Smoky Mountain Living magazine.

Charles Frazier grew up in the mountains of Western North Carolina. Cold Mountain (1997), his highly acclaimed first novel, was an international bestseller, won the National Book Award in 1997, and was adapted into an Academy Award-winning film by Anthony Minghella in 2003. Charles's second novel, Thirteen Moons (2006), was a New York Times bestseller and named a best book of the year by the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, and St. Louis Post-Dispatch. His third novel, Nightwoods (2011), also a New York Times bestseller, is a critically acclaimed literary thriller set in a fictional Western North Carolina town in the early 1960s. Charles's latest novel, Varina, an instant New York Times bestseller released in April of 2018, is a fictional reimagining of the life of Varina Howell Davis before, during, and after the American Civil War.

Charles received a B.A. from the University of North Carolina, an M.A. from  Appalachian State University, and a Ph.D. in English from the University of South Carolina. He taught English at University of Colorado Boulder and at North Carolina State University.