"Writers and travelers are mesmerized alike by knowing of their destinations." -- Eudora Welty
Eudora Alice Welty (April 13, 1909 – July 23, 2001) was an 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.
"A good snapshot stops a moment from running away.""A sheltered life can be a daring life as well. For all serious daring starts from within.""All serious daring starts from within.""Beware of a man with manners.""Greater than scene is situation. Greater than situation is implication. Greater than all of these is a single, entire human being, who will never be confined in any frame.""I am a writer who came of a sheltered life. A sheltered life can be a daring life as well. For all serious daring starts from within.""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 of themselves like grass.""Never think you've seen the last of anything.""The events in our lives happen in a sequence in time, but in their significance to ourselves they find their own order the continuous thread of revelation.""The excursion is the same when you go looking for your sorrow as when you go looking for your joy.""Through travel I first became aware of the outside world; it was through travel that I found my own introspective way into becoming a part of it.""To imagine yourself inside another person... is what a storywriter does in every piece of work; it is his first step, and his last too, I suppose.""Writing a story or a novel is one way of discovering sequence in experience, of stumbling upon cause and effect in the happenings of a writer's own life.""Writing fiction has developed in me an abiding respect for the unknown in a human lifetime and a sense of where to look for the threads, how to follow, how to connect, find in the thick of the tangle what clear line persists."
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 the PO", which was inspired by a woman she photographed ironing in the back of a small post office.
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, who 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 the frequently anthologized "A Worn Path". Excited by the printing of Welty's works in such publications such as the Atlantic Monthly, the Junior League of Jackson, of which Welty was a member, requested permission from the publishers to reprint some of her works.
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.
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.
Mississippi State University sculpture professor, Critz Campbell, has designed furniture inspired by Welty that has been featured in the Smithsonian Magazine, New York Times, L.A. Times, Washington Post, Elle Magazine and the Discovery Channel.
