A_Worn_Path

Author Biography Eudora Welty was born on April 13, 1909, in Jackson, Mississippi, to Christian Webb and Chestina Andrews Welty. Her father was an insurance company president. She attended Mississippi State College for Women for a year and graduated from the University of Wisconsin in 1929 with a major in English literature. She also attended the Columbia University Graduate School of Business where she studied advertising. After graduation, the Great Depression hampered her ability to find a job in her chosen field, so she worked as a part−time journalist and copywriter at newspapers and radio stations near her home in Mississippi. She also acquired a job as a Works Progress Administration (WPA) photographer, a job that took her on assignments throughout Mississippi. The experience of traveling throughout the South in order to observe people gave her the impetus to begin writing stories. Her first published story, "Death of a Traveling Salesman,' ' was accepted in the journal Manuscript, and within two years her work was being accepted in many publications, including the Atlantic and the Southern Review. Welty has never married, and despite stints in Wisconsin in college and New York City as a member of the New York Times Book Review staff, Welty has lived on Pinehurst Street in Jackson most of her life. Her fiction reveals these deep ties to the South, and though often set in Mississippi, her stories reveal truths about the human condition that transcend region. Welty has published several collections of short stories, six novels, and has tried her hand at plays, poems, and children's books. Welty's published photographs also reveal an artist with a sharp eye for detail and compassionate treatment of her subjects. Winner of the 1972 Pulitzer Prize for her novel The Optimist's Daughter, several O. Henry Awards, two American Book Awards, and numerous others, Eudora Welty has established herself as one of the most admired fiction writers of the twentieth century.