National Willa Cather Center News

The Willa Cather Foundation hosts their 61st annual Willa Cather Spring Conference, June 2–4, 2016. As the world remembers the sacrifices made during the Great War, the conference will explore the war’s impact not only on Willa Cather’s life and war-era writings but on those of her literary contemporaries, as well as the legacy of the war on American culture.

The Nebraska Writers Guild is pleased to announce its first annual Summer Poetry Retreat to be held June 10th-12th, 2016 at the Willa Cather Second Home in Red Cloud, Nebraska. Registration must be completed at nebraskawriters.org by June 7th, 2016.

The 61st annual Willa Cather Spring Conference, “‘Both Bitter and Sweet’: Cather, Literature, and the Great War,” will focus on World War I and its effects on American life and culture. Summer Snow: A Celebration of Landscape features the work well-known regional artists and will be on display in our Red Cloud Opera House auditorium from May 1 to July 31, 2016.

Cunning, love, deception—all of these elements are present in Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro. This world-renowned opera will make its way to the Red Cloud stage on Friday, May 20, at 7:00 p.m. thanks to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Opera department. This event is free and open to the public!

The Willa Cather Foundation hosts their 61st annual Willa Cather Spring Conference, June 2–4, 2016! As the world remembers the sacrifices made during the Great War, the conference will explore the war’s impact not only on Willa Cather’s life and war-era writings but on those of her literary contemporaries, as well as the legacy of the war on American culture.

You might spot a familiar landmark on the cover of Local Glories: Opera Houses on Main Street, Where Art and Community Meet, by Ann Satterthwaite. The book, which charts the histories of many opera houses across the country and their roles in the lives of small town Americans, features our own Red Cloud Opera House on its front cover, which is only appropriate, given the book's close look at how opera houses continue to play a vital economic and cultural role in their communities.

Eclectic and beautiful, the new exhibit at the Red Cloud Opera House Gallery is one-of-a-kind. Jack Sandeen, Amy Sandeen, and Mary Linnea Vaughan have collaborated to create the art exhibit Nature as Muse.

When singer and songwriter Matt Whipkey performs an acoustic show at an intimate venue, he still plays like there’s a band behind him. Having earned an Omaha Arts and Entertainment Award for artist and album of the year in 2013, Whipkey’s strong lyrical command and virtuoso guitar work is mesmerizing. Whipkey will be joined by Corey Anderson on Saturday, April 16, at 7:00 PM for an acoustic rock & roll show at the Red Cloud Opera House.

Mark your calendars for the next International Cather Seminar, scheduled for June 11-17, 2017, at Pittsburgh's Duquesne University. During Cather's ten years in Pittsburgh, she worked as an editor, teacher, reviewer, and freelance writer. As importantly, she collected friends and mixed with all sorts of Pittsburghers. She published extensively—not just hundreds of profiles and reviews, but more than thirty short stories, a collection of poetry, April Twilights (1903), and The Troll Garden, her first collection of stories.