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Current News
Holidays and Year-End Reviews Bring Acclaim to Welty-Themed Books
One Writer's Garden: Eudora Welty's Home Place by Susan Haltom and Jane Roy Brown
The exquisite One Writer's Garden sold out before Christmas and is now in its second printing by University Press of Mississippi. It also made the list of favorites in several publications in recent weeks—from the Dallas Morning News to the New York Journal of Books and from The American Gardener to Horticulture magazine. It was listed as one of the year's notable books by the Southern Garden History Society and selected for inclusion in "25 Years of Great Gardening Books" for the 100th issue of the British garden journal Hortus, forthcoming in 2012. For excerpts from the reviews, click here.
Noted author Ann Patchett lauded One Writer's Garden on The Martha Stewart Show on the Hallmark Channel in December as she discussed her new Nashville bookstore, Parnassus, and books she stocked for holiday sales. Click http://vimeo.com/33917517 to see Patchett's conversation with Stewart about the book and Welty.
 Here's what "The Daily Beast" from Newsweek had to say: "In the mid-20th century, around the same time that Eudora Welty launched a prolific literary career, she was honing her horticultural skills in her modest Mississippi garden. The importance of place was a recurring theme in Welty’s work. Even in her earliest short stories, her images of gardens and flora evoke a distinctive Southern ambiance. One Writer's Garden is a richly illustrated tour of the backyard garden Welty helped restore before she died in 2001. Set against the historical events of the early 20th century, the book also sheds light on the social mores that characterized the South during that period. It also paints a vivid portrait of Welty through the years, a writer who tended to her daylilies and roses with the same passion and precision as she did to her prose."
Lemuria Bookstore's Nan Goodman did a splendid review on the book on her blog. Read what she had to say by clicking http://blog.lemuriabooks.com/2011/12/gardening-books-for-christmas/
Authors Susan Haltom and Jane Roy Brown and photographer Langdon Clay have made appearances at book fairs, garden clubs, bookstores, and community groups around the country, and interest in the book has been brisk.For a list of their 2012 scheduled appearances, click here. To contact the authors for appearances, email: susan.haltom@gmail.com or janeroybrown@verizon.net.
What There Is to Say We Have Said: The Correspondence of Eudora Welty and William Maxwell by Suzanne Marrs
 Suzanne Marrs' collection of the letters between Welty and long-time editor of The New Yorker, William Maxwell, and his wife, Emily, has recently been named a notable book of 2011 in several publications. The Chicago Tribune has it on the list of best books for 2011. Julia Keller says: "The legendary Southern writer and her invaluable editor, Maxwell, revealed in their own funny, smart and touching words to each other."
The Richmond Times-Dispatch's Judith Chettle names it among her top ten favorites: "Letters ideally reflect shared interests and sympathies. The best, like What There Is To Say We Have Said, invite one to draw up a chair and enjoy two friends as interested in gardening as writing. As Welty wrote about letters, 'To read them is to be present when some discovery of truth — or untruth — is just occurring.' This collection recalls not only such writers as Elizabeth Bowen, John Updike and John Cheever, but much of the 20th century. This collection is a remarkable testament to friendship, literature and life.
James D. Watts, Jr., in The Tulsa World named in one of the best four books of the year, calling it "a valuable portrait of a unique and lasting friendship, and a celebration of a certain kind of joy that is rapidly disappearing - the joy of writing and sending, receiving and reading personal letters.... It's the little aphoristic, almost tossed-away insights about the process and craft and joys and pains of writing studded throughout these letters that make What There is to Say We Have Said of value to anyone who is interested in writing."
Marrs continues to lecture frequently on the book, which will be issued in paperback in May 2012. She appeared at the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference at Middlebury College in Vermont, the oldest writers conference in America and where Welty herself was a fellow in 1940. She also was a guest on "The Diane Rehm Show" on National Public Radio. To hear the broadcast interview, visit: http://thedianerehmshow.org/audio-player?nid=14185. Marrs is the Welty Foundation Scholar-in-Residence at Millsaps College.
Feild Cooperative Association, Inc., Provides Grant for Teacher Media Resource Kit Duplication, Distribution
 The Feild Cooperative Association, Inc., has awarded a grant to the Eudora Welty Foundation to produce and distribute additional copies of Welty and the Craft of Writing, the media resource kit available on request to teachers at no cost.
The award-winning educational resource contains a DVD of Welty reading three of her most frequently-taught and best loved stories, "A Worn Path," "Why I Live at the P. O.," and "Petrified Man." An interactive CD-Rom in the kit contains Welty photographs, manuscripts and correspondence related to the stories, as well as a teacher guide. The development of resource kit was made possible, in part, through the National Endowment for the Arts and the Comcast Foundation. The original set of 500 kits "sold out," with requests coming from teachers in 38 states and three countries.
Teachers may order a kit by downloading and filling out this form and returning it to the addres on the flier.
Recent News
Welty Photography Exhibit Traveled to Mississippi University for Women and Mississippi State University
Eudora Welty: Exposures and Reflections, a landmark exhibit of Welty's photographs taken during the Great Depression, was displayed at the Mississippi University for Women Fine Arts Gallery last fall, hanging throughout the Eudora Welty Symposium in October. It then traveled to Mississippi State University for display in the Colvard Union Gallery in November and December. The exhibit was developed by the Museum of Mobile and has traveled the Southern Literary Trail, thanks to a partnership between the Trail and the Alabama Humanities Foundation. For more information, contact http://www.southernliterarytrail.org/welty-exhibit.html.
Mississippi State University Freshmen Read The Optimist's Daughter During Fall 2011 Semester Welty Focus
A semester of Eudora Welty-related activities occurred at Mississippi State University in the fall of 2011, where all freshmen read The Optimist's Daughter. Lectures, a theatrical presentation, panel discussions, an essay contest, a Welty photography exhibit, and other multidisciplinary activities were scheduled from September through November, sponsored by The Maroon Edition: MSU's First-Year Reading Experience To learn more, visit: http://guides.library.msstate.edu/maroonedition2011.
Scholastic Writing Awards Competitors Chosen for Summer Writing Program Scholarships
Mississippi participants in the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers Scholastic Writing Awards competition—Samantha Alliston and Aaron Cooper, students at Mississippi School for the Arts—were selected to receive nationally given scholarships for the Alliance Summer Arts Program. The scholarships are competitive and eligibility is dependent on student performance within the regional level of the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. Alliston will attend the Young Writers' Workshop at the Kenyon Review (Kenyon College, Ohio) and Cooper will attend the Reynolds Young Writers Workshop at Denison University in Granville, Ohio.
Research Fellow Spends Summer in Welty Collection at Mississippi Department of Archives and History
Elizabeth Crews, a doctoral candidate at Georgia State University, has completed the first Eudora Welty Foundation-sponsored graduate student research fellowship in the Welty Collection at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History. Crews worked during the summer in Welty manuscripts and correspondence. She focused primarily on the concept of home and what it meant to Welty. Her dissertation is centered on home as evidenced in Delta Wedding and The Optimist's Daughter.
Alfred Uhry Leads Welty Playwriting Workshop with Five Outstanding Writers
Five outstanding playwrights participated in the first Eudora Welty Playwritng Workshop conducted by Alfred Uhry, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and member of the Eudora Welty Foundation National Advisory Board, at Millsaps College in June. Jake Jepson, New Haven, Connecticut; Joshua Harmon, Atlanta, Georgia; Andrew Kozma, Houston, Texas; Hana Mironoff, Fayetteville, Arkansas; and Barbara St. Clair, Safety Harbour, Florida, each worked on adapting a Welty short story for the stage.
Three Students Win National Honors in Scholastic Writing Awards Competition; 53 Named Regional Winners
Three students who participated in the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers Scholastic Writing Awards competition through the Welty Foundation's Mississippi affiliation in partnership with the Eudora Welty House have won national awards. They are Aaron Cooper, Mississippi School for the Arts, who received a silver medal for dramatic script; Craig Stewart, Mississippi School for the Arts, who won a silver medal in poetry; and Kate Thompson, Mississippi School for Math and Science, who received an American Voices award for poetry. Fifty-three students for 12 Mississippi schools were named regional winners, and five of the 53 were selected as American Voices Nominees.
Welty Foundation National Advisory Board Welcomes Four New Members
Four new members of the National Advisory Board were welcomed at the board's joint meeting with the Eudora Welty Foundation April 15-16 in Oxford, Mississippi. New members are Nancy Bierman, Dallas, Texas; Eric Etheridge, New York, New York; Randall Pinkston, Teaneck, New Jersey; and Lee Smith, Hillsborough, North Carolina. Bierman is a dedicated community leader and volunteer; Etheridge is a photographer/editor/website designer; Pinkston is a correspondent for the CBS evening news and other network broadcasts; and Smith is an award-winning, best-selling author of 15 works of fiction.
American Daffodil Society Visits Welty Garden
Daffodils—one of nature's early signs of spring—greeted growers and exhibitors March 11 when the American Daffodil Society (ADS) visited the Welty Garden as part of its annual four-day meeting held in Jackson this year. The garden, designated an American Daffodil Society Display Garden by ADS, features over 28 varieties of the flowers. Daffodils were a central feature of the garden planted and tended by Welty and her mother, Chestina, from 1925-1945 and now meticulously restored.
To schedule a tour of National Historic Landmark Eudora Welty House and the lovely springtime Garden, call (601)353-7762 or email weltytours@mdah.state.ms.us
Eudora Welty and Flannery O'Connor: The Art of the Short Story was the subject of a seminar presented February 11 at Millsaps College in Jackson by the Eudora Welty House and the Millsaps College Teachers Institute. CEUs were offered to participants in the day-long workshop, taught by Welty Foundation Scholar-in-Residence at Millsaps, Dr. Suzanne Marrs, and Beverly Fatheree, English professor at Hinds Community College since 1980. Participants explored the similarities and differences in Welty's and O'Connor' works.
Southern Writers Onstage featured Eudora Welty's work in "A Fire Was in My Head" with Brenda Currin and Phil Fortenberry on January 31 at 7:30 p.m. at Theatrical Outfit's Balzer Theater at Herren's in Atlanta, Georgia. Based on Eudora Welty's short story "Music from Spain," "A Fire Was in My Head" takes Welty's words and sets them to music inspired by the repertory of the Spanish guitarist Andres Segovia, whose performance in San Francisco sparked Welty's idea for the original short story, written while she was living in that city far from her home in Jackson, Mississippi.
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