Eudora Welty

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Eudora Welty (b. April 13, 1909, Jackson, Mississippi – d. July 23, 2001, Jackson, Mississippi) was an award-winning author and photographer who wrote about the American South.

She was born in Jackson, Mississippi and lived a significant portion of her life in the city's Belhaven neighborhood, where her home has been preserved. She was educated at the Mississippi State College for Women (now called Mississippi University for Women), the University of Wisconsin, and Columbia University's business school. During the 1930s, Welty worked as a photographer for the Works Progress Administration. This job sent her all over the state of Mississippi taking photographs of people from all economic and social classes. Collections of her photographs are One Time, One Place, and Photographs.

But Welty's true love was language, not photography, and she soon devoted her energy to writing fiction. Her first short story, Death of a Traveling Salesman, appeared in 1936 and in 1941 she published her first collection of short stories, A Curtain of Green. Her novel, The Optimist's Daughter, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973.

The Canadian writer Alice Munro has said that Welty's A Worn Path is perhaps the most perfect short story ever written ^{[citation needed]}.

The e-mail client Eudora was named after her (in reference to her short story ([1]) Why I Live at the P.O. ([2]).

Eudora Welty died of pneumonia in Jackson, aged 92.

[edit] Major Works

"Death of a Traveling Salesman" 1936
"A Worn Path" 1941
The Robber Bridegroom (novella) 1942
The Wide Net and Other Stories 1943
The Golden Apples 1949
The Ponder Heart 1953
The Bride of the Innisfallen, and Other Stories 1955
Three Papers on Fiction (addresses) 1962
"A Curtain of Green" 1964
The Shoe Bird (juvenile) 1964
Thirteen Stories 1965
A Sweet Devouring (nonfiction) 1969
Losing Battles (novel) 1970
"A Flock of Guinea Hens Seen from a Car" (poem) 1970
One Time, One Place: MS in the Depression: A Snapshot Album 1971
The Optimist's Daughter (novel) 1972
The Eye of the Story (selected essays and reviews) 1978
The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty 1980
One Writer's Beginnings (autobiography) 1984
Morgana: Two Stories from 'The Golden Apples' 1988
Photographs 1989
A Delta Wedding

[edit] Trivia

In The Simpsons episode, A Star is Burns, after Jay Sherman lets out a loud belch and Lisa asks how many Pulitzer Prize winners could do that, Jay responds, "Just me and Eudora Welty."