Susan Sheppard (1955-2021) was a native West Virginian, with deep roots in Appalachia. Sheppard was the winner of a West Virginia Department of Culture & History's poetry fellowship, which is how she won her first computer. She was the first runner-up in the Poets & Writer's Maureen Egen Writer's Exchange for 2019 and traveled as a part of the "Women of Appalachia Spoken Word Series." She was "Black Dutch," meaning that she was descended from the less than 850 Shawnee Indians who remained east of the Mississippi River after the other Shawnee (during the "Trail of Tears" removal) were forced onto reservations out west in the 1830s. Susan, along with others in the Friend family, was a direct descendent of Shawnee Chief Big Thunder through his daughter, Bright Lightning, whose name was anglicized to "Anna Friend."
