Cather Inducted into the New York State Writers Hall of Fame

On Friday, April 1, 2011 the Empire State Center for the Book will induct nine authors into the New York State Writers Hall of Fame. Willa Cather is among this prestigious group of seven deceased and two living authors whose writings have made a lasting contribution to literature. A member of the Willa Cather Foundation Board of Governors, along with a representative of the Cather family will be present to accept the honor on behalf of Ms. Cather.

Willa Cather (1873-1947) was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American author who first achieved national recognition for novels such as O Pioneers! and My Ántonia, in which she drew on her own experiences of growing up on the frontier prairies of Nebraska. But Cather was born in Virginia, lived for several years in Pittsburgh, spent her last forty years as a resident of New York City, and traveled widely throughout the United States and in Canada and Europe. The imaginative "Catherland" of her fiction draws on the full range of these settings and experiences: the backdrop for much of One of Ours (1922), for which she won the Pulitzer Prize, is World War I France; Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927) is set in the nineteenth-century American southwest, Shadows on the Rock (1931) in seventeenth-century Quebec; and in her powerful final novel, Sapphira and the Slave Girl (1940), Cather returned to the Virginia of her childhood.

Over the past 56 years, the Willa Cather Foundation has worked to preserve and promote the art, literary, and historical collection relating to the life, time, and work of Willa Cather; one of America-and the world's-most beloved and respected authors. The Foundation is based in Red Cloud, Nebraska, where Willa Cather spent her formative years. Its Spring Conferences, International Seminars, Elderhostels, Prairie Writers’ Workshops, and Newsletter & Review exemplify the WCF’s commitment to academic and artistic excellence. In total, the Willa Cather Historic Site comprises the largest number of national historic designated buildings devoted to one author in the United States. Both town and country tours of sites related to Cather are available; for more information, visit www.WillaCather.org or call 866-731-7304.

Other New York State Writers Hall of Fame inductees are Dorothy Parker, Herman Melville, Madeleine L‘Engle, John Ashbery, Julia DeBurgos, Ralph Ellison, Paula Fox, and Lorraine Hansberry. The induction ceremony into the NYS Writers Hall of Fame will be the focus of the Empire State Book Festival Gala in Albany, New York. The ticketed event is open to the public. Plans are underway to house the NYS Writers Hall of Fame at the New York State Library in Albany.