National Willa Cather Center News

NEW! From the award-winning NET documentary Willa Cather—The Road is All, we are posting some of the best interview quotes from the primary scholars that were interviewed. Currently featured are four provocative quotes from Pulitzer Prize winning historian, David McCullough, author of New York Times best sellers, John Adams and Truman. Also featured are two quotes from the internationally renowned University of Nebraska scholar, Susan Rosowski. Most of these clips have never been seen before.

Barbara and Kern Wisman of Jerusalem, Israel talk about their visit to the Willa Cather Foundation.

The Willa Cather Foundation is now seeking 20-minute papers for presentation in two panels devoted specifically to Cather scholarship at the American Literature Association meeting in San Francisco, May 27-30, 2010.

Topics: We seek the best and most innovative of ongoing Cather scholarship, and all topics and approaches are welcomed.

Contact: Please send abstracts or proposals (preferably electronically) of 300-500 words to John Swift ( swiftj@oxy.edu), ECLS Department, Occidental College, Los Angeles CA 90041 (phone 323 259 2804).

In 1888, the fourteen-year-old Willa Cather made a memorable entry in a friendship album owned by her schoolmate Serena White. Cather signed herself "Wm. Cather M.D." Among her observations, our young Dr. Cather's "idea of perfect happiness" was "Amputating Limbs."

Cather's two-page entry in the album appeared in Mildred R. Bennett's The World of Willa Cather, originally published in 1951. Soon, and for the first time, the full album will be reproduced here for the enjoyment of readers and scholars and anyone interested in the late 19th century world of Cather's youth.

Willa Cather taught in a writers' workshop in  1922, at Middlebury College, while working on  her novel A Lost Lady. Upon the completion of her five-session course, her students saluted her with a witless poem: "Oh Miss Cather, when we gather/ For your talks so wise and clear/ Now you're going we're all hoping/ You'll come back another year." Perhaps because of the poem, Cather did not come back another year. As a matter of fact, she never again taught a creative writing workshop and stood lifelong in moral opposition to the whole endeavor.

The 2010 Willa Cather Spring Conference, to be held June 3-5, will offer three days of events on the fresh topic of food and drink in Willa Cather's writing, based in Cather's "home town" of Red Cloud and the surrounding countryside. The conference will be held in Red Cloud and will open on June 3 with a Scholars' Symposium, presenting papers on the conference topic.

The website for the Willa Cather Foundation received a Merit Certificate for excellence from the Lincoln, Nebraska chapter of the American Marketing Association at its annual Prism Awards luncheon in May 2009. The award recognizes the website's striking design and strong functionality, and is a tribute to Pickering Creative Group, the Lincoln-based agency that worked with the Foundation to develop the site. The Willa Cather Foundation is honored by this recognition and is proud of our association with the talented team at Pickering Creative Group.

The Right Reverend Frank T. Griswold, XXV Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, addresses the Cather Spring Conference.

"It would not be an exaggeration to say that Willa Cather is partly responsible for my choosing the path I have chosen."

"Fiction and Art": A fiction writing workshop, with a careful look at art and design in Nebraska narratives.

The Willa Cather Foundation would like to invite you to attend this year's Prairie Writers' Workshop scheduled for July 13 through 17. This is an exceptional opportunity for aspiring writers to gain insight from novelist, Timothy Schaffert. Four-hour workshops will be held throughout the week in the evenings. Participants will be encouraged to visit the Willa Cather Memorial Prairie to gain inspiration from the land and its rare forbs and grasses.

While selecting photographs from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Archives and Special Collections for a gallery exhibit at the Red Cloud Opera House, I came across one image that I liked very much. In it, Willa Cather is holding a small baby, her niece Helen Louise Cather, and they are outside in front of a house with a curved balcony resting on large pillars. Cather seems to have just lifted the baby out of the wicker bassinet. Behind Willa Cather and baby Helen is a woman I did not recognize, her blurred face caught in a laugh.