National Willa Cather Center News

The 2010 Willa Cather Spring Conference, to be held June 3-5, will offer three days of events on the fresh topic of food and drink in Willa Cather's writing, based in Cather's "home town" of Red Cloud and the surrounding countryside. The conference will be held in Red Cloud and will open on June 3 with a Scholars' Symposium, presenting papers on the conference topic.

The website for the Willa Cather Foundation received a Merit Certificate for excellence from the Lincoln, Nebraska chapter of the American Marketing Association at its annual Prism Awards luncheon in May 2009. The award recognizes the website's striking design and strong functionality, and is a tribute to Pickering Creative Group, the Lincoln-based agency that worked with the Foundation to develop the site. The Willa Cather Foundation is honored by this recognition and is proud of our association with the talented team at Pickering Creative Group.

The Right Reverend Frank T. Griswold, XXV Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, addresses the Cather Spring Conference.

"It would not be an exaggeration to say that Willa Cather is partly responsible for my choosing the path I have chosen."

"Fiction and Art": A fiction writing workshop, with a careful look at art and design in Nebraska narratives.

The Willa Cather Foundation would like to invite you to attend this year's Prairie Writers' Workshop scheduled for July 13 through 17. This is an exceptional opportunity for aspiring writers to gain insight from novelist, Timothy Schaffert. Four-hour workshops will be held throughout the week in the evenings. Participants will be encouraged to visit the Willa Cather Memorial Prairie to gain inspiration from the land and its rare forbs and grasses.

While selecting photographs from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Archives and Special Collections for a gallery exhibit at the Red Cloud Opera House, I came across one image that I liked very much. In it, Willa Cather is holding a small baby, her niece Helen Louise Cather, and they are outside in front of a house with a curved balcony resting on large pillars. Cather seems to have just lifted the baby out of the wicker bassinet. Behind Willa Cather and baby Helen is a woman I did not recognize, her blurred face caught in a laugh.

The Willa Cather Foundation is proud to announce the completion of a prescribed burn on the Willa Cather Memorial Prairie. As part of an extensive restoration project funded by the Nebraska Environmental Trust, the Willa Cather Foundation burned 200 acres of the 608-acre Willa Cather Memorial Prairie. The Red Cloud Volunteer Fire Department facilitated the burn on April 18 & 19.

Red Cloud:  Willa Cather's Window to the World

June 15-19, 2009

Willa Cather chose to place an accent over the first syllable in her memorable character's name — Ántonia — to indicate the greater stress that syllable would receive when the name was pronounced.

Today the Willa Cather Foundation is delighted to announce its involvement in the Heritage Highway photo contest. For those who may be wondering how a photo contest pertains to the work of the Willa Cather Foundation, the byway is a 238-mile stretch of U.S. Highway 136 that cuts right through the heart of Cather country. The fertile farmland, natural prairies, and historical settlements found along the byway are the settings for many of Cather's works. These landscapes will surely set the stage for a vast array of beautiful photographs.

I have said before that the Middle Ground of the Cather Foundation is indeed broad reaching out from its center in Red Cloud to the far corners of the world. But sometimes, the world comes to Red Cloud.