Author: Willa Cather
Profile: Published Texts: Wilella Sibert Cather better known as Willa Cather was an American writer. She achieved appreciation for her novels of frontier life on The Song of the Lark, the Great Plains, My Antonia and O Pioneers! She was born in Gore, Virginia, United States and died in Park Avenue, United States.
She shifted to frontier Nebraska from Virginia with her family, grew up with immigrants from Europe including Russians, Swedes, Germans and Bohemians who were breaking the Great Plains land. She displayed her talent in story writing and journalism at the University of Nebraska. She graduated in the year 1895 and worked as drama and music editor and copy editor later, besides teaching as well. She was appointed as managing editor of the New York muckraking monthly, McClure’s after which she published her first short stories collection, The Troll Garden. She dedicated herself completely towards writing novels from 1912.
Writing style: Willa Cather was well known for her portrayals of the frontier life and the settlers on the American plains.
Nonfiction
1993 – The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy and the History of Christian Science
1936 – Not Under Forty (essays)
1949 – On Writing
Novels
1912 – Alexander’s Bridge
1913 – O Pioneers!
1915 – The Song of the Lark
1918 – My Antonia
1922 – One of Ours
1923 – A Lost Lady
1925 – The Professor’s House
1926 – My Mortal Enemy
1927 – Death Comes for the Archbishop
1931 – Shadows on the Rock
1935 – Lucy Gayheart
1940 – Sapphira and the Slave Girl
Essays and Articles
1920 – On the Art of Fiction, The Borzoi
Collections
1903 – April Twilights (poetry)
1905 – The Troll Garden (short stories)
1908 – A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays (short stories)
1920 – Youth and the Bright Medusa (short stories)
1932 – Obscure Destinies (three stories)
1936 – Not Under Forty
1948 – The Old Beauty and Others
1949 – Willa Cather: On Writing
1956 – Five Stories
2013 – The Selected Letters of Willa Cather
Documentary
The subject of the 2005 PBS documentary Willa Cather: The Road Is All was Willa Cather
Awards and Acknowledgements:
1955 – The Willa Cather Pioneer Memorial and Educational Foundation was founded (to support the study of her work and life and maintain many sites in Red Cloud, Nebrasa, her hometown)
1962 – Willa Cather was elected to the Nebraska Hall of Fame
1973 – Willa Cather was honored by the U.S. Postal Service by issuing a stamp bearing her image
1974 – Willa Cather was inducted into the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum, Hall of Great Westerners
1981 – The Willa Cather half-ounce gold medallion was created by the U.S. Mint
1986 – Cather was inducted into the Hall of Fame and National Cowgirl Museum
1988 – Cather was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame
1992 – A part of the film Nitrate Kisses in 1992 focuses on Cathers’ story who destroyed a number of papers and personal letters before her death. The argument presented in the film was that Willa Cather was covering up evidence of lesbianism.
2000 – Willa Cather was named member of the inaugural class of Virginia Women in History
2006 – A National Endowment of Humanities grant was granted to the Willa Cather Foundation for developing its work
2011 – Cather was inducted into the New York Writers Hall of Fame
