National Willa Cather Center News

Modern representations of a Victorian Christmas are certainly beautiful, but for much of Webster County during Willa Cather’s childhood, holiday celebrations were more modest. A peek into the archives helped to develop our 2024 holiday tours and suggest the ways the Cathers might have observed Christmas at home and with their neighbors.

"I am grateful that this show can be shown in the town where I started my life since most of the pieces of art happened in this county. Thank you to everyone at the National Willa Cather Center for allowing me to show my art in the town where I spent so much of my growing up years" 

—Karen Thurlow

"Remember, there is always more than one way to tell a story." —Edem K. Garro

Edem Garro's motto for her African-inspired Edem Soul Music is "encouraging and empowering the world through music, art and theatrical performances." 

On November 11, we’ll honor our nation’s fallen soldiers on Veteran’s Day, the 70th year that the United States has commemorated the sacrifice made by hundreds of thousands of young men and women in military conflicts. Willa Cather would have known November 11 as Armistice Day, a day when the veterans of World War I were honored, and our collections are rich with museum and archival items that further our understanding of the World War I experience and Cather’s depictions of it in One of Ours.

Two opportunities for Cather research and study in the foremost Willa Cather archives at University of Nebraska-Lincoln and at the National Willa Cather Center in Red Cloud, Nebraska!

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Playwright Becky Boesen gleaned some of her inspiration for her play, Not Too Far Distant, from the Nebraska Stories of Humanity: Holocaust Survivors & WWII Veterans, Network Portal & Educational Website. The collection aims to centralize access to the history of Nebraska Holocaust survivors and WWII liberators of Nazi camps in a collection of searchable stories and digitized documents.

October is American Archives Month, and as we kick off our My Ántonia Big Read activities, we look back at the way our archives have shaped how we read and talk about the novel!

Recent months have brought continued progress and important additions to the Hotel Garber development project. To fulfill a goal of the Red Cloud Creative District, the entire lower level of the Potter-Wright building will now be rehabilitated to house a Creative Hub. The project team has also grown with the addition of John Schwichtenberg as General Manager. 

During the Willa Cather Spring Conference, Sharon Kohout always makes time to say hello to her “Mama Simons.” Kohout’s great grandmother, Belle K. Simons, died in 1972 at 102 years old and is buried in her hometown of Red Cloud, Nebraska.