Mae Miller Claxton, an English professor at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, North Carolina, has won the Phoenix Award for Distinguished Achievement from the Eudora Welty Society. The award recognizes outstanding contributions to the field of studies of the Pulitzer Prize-winning author, whose work spans the 20th century. Welty, who died in 2001, wrote five novels and numerous short stories and essays in her lifetime and is renowned for her Depression-era photography. Dr. Claxton is the co-editor of Teaching the Works of Eudora Welty: Twenty-First-Century Approaches (University Press of Mississippi, 2018).
Professor Claxton teaches Southern Appalachian and Native American literature. Some of her research and studies have examined the connections between Welty’s photography and fiction. She served as president of the Eudora Welty Society from 2010-2012.
Dr. Claxton began teaching at Western Carolina University in 1996. She was promoted to associate professor in 2011 and to full professor in 2018.
Professor Claxton holds a bachelor’s degree in English and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Georgia. She also earned a master’s degree in English at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.