Willa Cather On Writing

Cather, the Nebraska-born novelist, describes her childhood, her career as a writer, and the influences on her work

Time Magazine's 10 Top Nonfiction Books of the Year • Willa Cather’s letters—withheld from publication for more than six decades—are finally available to the public in this fascinating selection. The hundreds collected here range from witty reports of life as a teenager in Red Cloud in the 1880s through her college years at the University of Nebraska, her time as a journalist in Pittsburgh and New York, and her growing eminence as a novelist. They describe her many travels and record her last years, when the loss of loved ones and the disasters of World War II brought her near to despair. Above all, they reveal her passionate interest in people, literature, and the arts. The voice is one we recognize from her fiction: confident, elegant, detailed, openhearted, concerned with profound ideas, but also at times sentimental, sarcastic, and funny. A deep pleasure to read, this volume reveals the intimate joys and sorrows of one of America’s most admired writers.

"My Mortal Enemy" is a novella written by American author Willa Cather, first published in 1926. It is a poignant and introspective work that explores themes of love, regret, and the passage of time. The story is narrated by Nellie, who reflects on the life of her cousin, Myra Henshawe, a woman who had been the subject of gossip and speculation due to her complex relationship with her husband Oswald. Myra is portrayed as a woman of strong will and passion, whose choices in life have led to both fulfillment and regrets. The novella delves into the contrast between personal desires and societal expectations. "My Mortal Enemy" is a short but emotionally rich work that examines the consequences of choices made in the pursuit of personal happiness and the price one may pay for deviating from conventional norms. It showcases Willa Cather's talent for character exploration and her ability to capture the human experience with depth and sensitivity.

"Whatever is felt upon the page without being specifically named there—that, one might say, is created." This famous observation appears inWilla Cather on Writing, a collection of essays and letters first published in 1949. In the course of it Cather writes, with grace and piercing clarity, about her own fiction and that of Sarah Orne Jewett, Stephen Crane, and Katherine Mansfield, among others. She concludes, "Art is a concrete and personal and rather childish thing after all—no matter what people do to graft it into science and make it sociological and psychological; it is no good at all unless it is let alone to be itself—a game of make-believe, of re-production, very exciting and delightful to people who have an ear for it or an eye for it."

"Whatever is felt upon the page without being specifically named there—that, one might say, is created." This famous observation appears in Willa Cather on Writing, a collection of essays and letters first published in 1949. In the course of it Cather writes, with grace and piercing clarity, about her own fiction and that of Sarah Orne Jewett, Stephen Crane, and Katherine Mansfield, among others. She concludes, "Art is a concrete and personal and rather childish thing after all—no matter what people do to graft it into science and make it sociological and psychological; it is no good at all unless it is let alone to be itself—a game of make-believe, of re-production, very exciting and delightful to people who have an ear for it or an eye for it."

The World of Willa Cather describes the people and places in Nebraska that figure prominently in many of Cather’s best novels and short stories. It offers material that can be found nowhere else. Here are Willa Cather of Red Cloud, her family and friends, and the things that formed her sensibilities.

2023 Nebraska Book Award In 2015, when cyberbullies disrupt her life in Southern California, Vivi Marx decides to cut her cord with the internet and take her life offline for a year. She flees to the one place where she felt safe as a child--with her grandmother in Lincoln, Nebraska. Nevermind that her grandmother is long dead and she doesn't know anyone else in the state. Even before she meets her new neighbors on Fieldcrest Drive, Vivi knows she's made a terrible mistake, but every plan she makes to leave is foiled. Despite her efforts to outrun it, trouble follows her to Nebraska, just not in the ways she'd feared. With the help of her neighbors, Willa Cather's novels, and her own imagination, Vivi finds something she hadn't known she was searching for.