Eudora Alice Welty (April 13, 1909 – July 23, 2001) was an award-winning American author who wrote short stories and novels about the American South. Her book, The Optimist's Daughter, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973 and Welty was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, among numerous awards. She was the first living author to have her works published by the Library of America. Her house in Jackson, Mississippi, is a National Historic Landmark and open to the public as a museum.

Biography

Welty was born in Jackson, Mississippi, to Chestina and Christian Welty, a schoolteacher and insurance executive, respectively. She had two brothers, Edward and Walter., The Mississippi Writer's Page, University of Mississippi, Feb 2006, accessed 25 May 2009 She lived most of her life in Jackson's Belhaven neighborhood in the house her parents built in 1925. She donated her home to the Mississippi Department of Archives and History in honor of her parents. It has been preserved as a museum after having been designated a National Historic Landmark.

She was educated at the Mississippi State College for Women (now called Mississippi University for Women) and later studied at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and Columbia University School of Business. While at Columbia, she was the captain of the women's polo team. Welty was a regular at Romany Marie's café in 1930.Jan Whitaker. Tea at the Blue Lantern Inn: A Social History of the Tea Room Craze in America, New York: St. Martin's Press, 2002, (p. 42). ISBN 0-31229-064-0 Her work was rooted in her sense of place, of Mississippi and its peoples.

Welty died of pneumonia in Jackson at the age of 92. She was buried there in Greenwood Cemetery.

Photography

During the 1930s, Welty worked as a publicity agent for the Works Progress Administration, a job that sent her around Mississippi. On her own time, she took some memorable photographs during the Great Depression of people from all economic and social classes. Collections of her photographs were published as One Time, One Place (1971) and Photographs (1989). Her photography was the basis for several of her short stories, including "Why I Live at PO", which was inspired by a woman she photographed ironing in the back of a small post office.

Writing career

Welty was focused on her writing but continued to take photographs until the 1950s. Her first short story, "Death of a Traveling Salesman", appeared in 1936. Her work attracted the attention of author Katherine Anne Porter. Porter became a mentor to Welty and wrote the foreword to Welty's first collection of short stories, A Curtain of Green, in 1941. The book immediately established Welty as one of American literature's leading lights and featured the stories "Why I Live at the P.O.", "Petrified Man", and "A Worn Path".

Her novel, The Optimist's Daughter, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1973. In 1992, Welty was awarded the Rea Award for the Short Story for her lifetime contributions to the American short story.

Welty was a charter member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, founded in 1987. She also taught creative writing at colleges and in workshops. She lived near Jackson's Belhaven College and was a common sight among the people of her hometown.

Honors

• 1954 - William Dean Howells medal for fiction, The Ponder Heart

• 1973 - Pulitzer Prize, The Optimist's Daughter

• 1980 - Presidential Medal of Freedom

• 1983 - Invited by Harvard University to give the first annual Massey Lectures in the History of American Civilization

• 1991 - National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American LettersSuzanne Marrs, Eudora Welty: A Biography, New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2005, p. 547

• 1991 - Peggy V. Helmerich Distinguished Author Award

• 1992 - Rea Award for the Short StorySuzanne Marrs, Eudora Welty: A Biography, New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2005, p. 549

• 1993 - Charles Frankel Prize, National Endowment for the Humanities

• 1993 - PEN/Malamud Award for the Short Story

• 1993 - Distinguished Alumni Award, American Association of State Colleges and Universities

• 1996 - French Légion d’Honneur

• 1998 - First living author to have her works published in the prestigious Library of America series.

Short story collections

• "Death of a Traveling Salesman" (separate short story), 1936

• "A Worn Path" (separate short story), 1940

• A Curtain of Green, 1941

• The Wide Net and Other Stories, 1943

• Music from Spain, 1948

• The Golden Apples, 1949

• Selected Stories, 1954

• The Bride of the Innisfallen and Other Stories, 1955

• Thirteen Stories, 1965

• The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty, 1982

• Moon Lake and Other Stories, 1980

• Morgana: Two Stories from The Golden Apples, 1988

Novels

• The Robber Bridegroom (novella), 1942

• Delta Wedding, 1946

• The Ponder Heart, 1954

• The Shoe Bird (juvenile), 1964

• Losing Battles, 1970

• The Optimist's Daughter, 1972

Literary criticism and non-fiction

• Three Papers on Fiction (criticism), 1962

• The Eye of the Story (selected essays and reviews), 1978

• One Writer's Beginnings (autobiography), 1983

• The Norton Book of Friendship (editor, with Roland A. Sharp), 1991

• 3 Minutes or Less (selected essay), 2001

Commemoration

• Eudora, the name given to the Internet email program developed by Steve Dorner in 1990, was inspired by Welty's story "Why I Live at the P.O."

• The State of Mississippi established a "Eudora Welty Day."

• Each October, Mississippi University for Women hosts the Eudora Welty Writers' Symposium to promote and celebrate the work of contemporary Southern writers.

See also

• Eudora Welty House