Literary Readings and Contests
NC State Literary Readings Fall 2024
Destiny Hemphill (Poetry)
Thursday, September 12, 7:30 PM Caldwell Hall Lounge, Caldwell Hall (map)
Destiny Hemphill is a chronically ill ritual worker and poet, living on the unceded territory of the Eno-Occaneechi band of the Saponi Nation (Durham, NC). A recipient of fellowships from Naropa University’s Summer Writing Program, Callaloo, Tin House, and Kenyon Review’s Writers Workshop, she is the co-editor of Poetry as Spellcasting (North Atlantic Books, 2023) with Lisbeth White and Tamiko Beyer. She is also the author of the poetry collection motherworld: a devotional for the alter-life (Action Books, 2023), a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award and Publishing Triangle’s Audre Lorde Prize. Her work has also been featured in Poetry Magazine, Southern Cultures, and the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day series. She served as an inaugural Poetry Coalition Fellow, a Kenan Visiting Writer in Poetry at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, and an inaugural Tin House Reading Fellow.
Emile Menzel (Poetry)
Tuesday, October 22, 7:30 PM Caldwell Hall Lounge, Caldwell Hall (map)
Emilie Menzel, writer and librarian of hybridities, is the author of the book-length lyric The Girl Who Became a Rabbit (Hub City Press, 2024). Their gently haunted writing features in Copper Nickel, Bennington Review, and The Offing, amongst others, and has garnered such honors as the New Southern Voices Poetry Prize, the Deborah Slosberg Memorial Award in Poetry, and the Cara Parravani Memorial Award in Fiction. Menzel holds an MFA from UMass Amherst and serves as a collections librarian at Duke University and creative resources librarian for Seventh Wave. Raised on Georgia summers, they live in Durham, North Carolina.
Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle and NC State Fiction Awards (Fiction)
Thursday, November 14, 7:30 PM Caldwell Hall Lounge, Caldwell Hall (map)
Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle, an enrolled citizen of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians and resides in Qualla, NC with her husband, Evan and sons Ross and Charlie. She holds degrees from Yale University and the College of William and Mary. Her debut novel, Even As We Breathe, was released by the University Press of Kentucky in 2020, 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. Her first novel manuscript, Going to Water is winner of the Morning Star Award for Creative Writing from the Native American Literature Symposium (2012) and a finalist for the PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction (2014).
Clapsaddle’s work has appeared in Yes! Magazine, Lit Hub, Smoky Mountain Living Magazine, South Writ Large Our State Magazine, Bon Appétit, Travel + Leisure Magazine and The Atlantic. After serving as executive director of the Cherokee Preservation Foundation, Annette returned to teaching at Swain County 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 People, Clapsaddle launched “Confluence: An Indigenous Writers’ Workshop Series” that seeks to bring Indigenous writers to the Qualla Boundary (Cherokee, NC) to work with aspiring writers several times throughout the year.