Eudora Welty

Author profile

born

April 13, 1909 in Jackson, Mississippi, The United States

died

July 23, 2001

gender

female

website

http://www.eudorawelty.org/

genre

Literature & Fiction

About this author

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Eudora Alice Welty 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 she 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.

Welty was born in Jackson, Mississippi, and lived a significant portion of her life in the city's Belhaven neighborhood, where her home has been preserved. She was educated at the Mississippi State College for Women (now called Mississippi University for Women), the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Columbia Business School. While at Columbia University, where she was the captain of the women's polo...more Eudora Alice Welty 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 she 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.

Welty was born in Jackson, Mississippi, and lived a significant portion of her life in the city's Belhaven neighborhood, where her home has been preserved. She was educated at the Mississippi State College for Women (now called Mississippi University for Women), the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Columbia Business School. While at Columbia University, where she was the captain of the women's polo team, Welty was a regular at Romany Marie's café in 1930.

During the 1930s, Welty worked as a photographer for the Works Progress Administration, a job that sent her all over the state of Mississippi photographing people from all economic and social classes. Collections of her photographs are One Time, One Place and Photographs.

Welty's true love was literature, not photography, and she soon devoted her energy to writing fiction. Her first short story, "Death of a Traveling Salesman," appeared in 1936. Her work attracted the attention of Katherine Anne Porter, who became a mentor to her 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 legendary and oft-anthologized stories "Why I Live at the P.O.," "Petrified Man," and "A Worn Path." Her novel, The Optimist's Daughter, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973.

In 1992, Welty was awarded the Rea Award for the Short Story for her lifetime contributions to the American short story, and was also a charter member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, founded in 1987. In her later life, she lived near Belhaven College in Jackson, Mississippi, where, despite her fame, she was still a common sight among the people of her hometown.
Eudora Welty died of pneumonia in Jackson, Mississippi, at the age of 92, and is buried in Greenwood Cemetery in Jackson.

Excerpted and adopted from Wikipedia.(less)

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Books by Eudora Welty

Average rating: 3.84 · 11,981 ratings · 1,210 reviews · 84 distinct works

	The Collected Stories 4.29 avg rating — 1,782 ratings — published 1980 — 14 editions	My rating:
	The Optimist's Daughter 3.42 avg rating — 2,643 ratings — published 1972 — 22 editions	My rating:
	One Writer's Beginnings 3.99 avg rating — 1,030 ratings — published 1983 — 14 editions	My rating:
	Delta Wedding 3.64 avg rating — 876 ratings — published 1946 — 14 editions	My rating:
	Why I Live at the P.O. 4.35 avg rating — 369 ratings — published 1941 — 2 editions	My rating:
	The Ponder Heart 3.63 avg rating — 442 ratings — published 1954 — 5 editions	My rating:
	The Robber Bridegroom 3.67 avg rating — 414 ratings — published 1942 — 9 editions	My rating:
	The Golden Apples 3.90 avg rating — 310 ratings — published 1949	My rating:
	Thirteen Stories by Eudora Welty, Ruth M. Vande Kieft (Editor) 4.00 avg rating — 247 ratings — published 1965 — 3 editions	My rating:
	A Curtain of Green and Other Stories by Eudora Welty, Katherine Anne Porter (Introduction) 4.12 avg rating — 251 ratings — published 1941 — 3 editions	My rating:

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Quotes by Eudora Welty

“Indeed, learning to write may be part of learning to read. For all I know, writing comes out of a superior devotion to reading.”
― Eudora Welty, On Writing

tags: devotion , inspirational , learning , reading , writing

177 people liked it

“It had been startling and disappointing to me to find out that story books had been written by people, that books were not natural wonders, coming up of themselves like grass. Yet regardless of where they come from, I cannot remember a time when I was not in love with them -- with the books themselves, cover and binding and the paper they were printed on, with their smell and their weight and with their possession in my arms, captured and carried off to myself. Still illiterate, I was ready for them, committed to all the reading I could give them ...”
― Eudora Welty, One Writer's Beginnings

tags: books , creativity , inspiration , literature , reading , storytelling , writing

108 people liked it

“A good snapshot keeps a moment from running away.”
― Eudora Welty

tags: memory , photography

99 people liked it

See all Eudora Welty's quotes »

Polls

What do you recommend for April? There are some authors and then there are some themes.

Emily Brontë;Charlotte Brontë; Anne Brontë

2 votes 28.6%

Anne McCaffrey

1 vote 14.3%

Tom Clancy

1 vote 14.3%

Eudora Welty

1 vote 14.3%

A novel that has April, Showers, Flowers, Muddy or Rain in the title (essentially anything to do with April, Showers, Flowers, etc).

1 vote 14.3%

A novel that is set in Paris, as Paris is beautiful in the Springtime.

1 vote 14.3%

Jim Morrison's poetry

0 votes 0.0%

William Shakespeare

0 votes 0.0%

Henry James

0 votes 0.0%

A novel that somehow involves Easter (religious or secular) themes!

0 votes 0.0%

7 total votes

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Eudora Welty

Author profile

combine editionsBooks by Eudora Welty

Quotes by Eudora Welty

Polls

Topics Mentioning This Author

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Books by Eudora Welty