Welty reports that her father was an “optimist,” but that her mother was the more daring individual of the two.Eudora Welty died of pneumonia in Jackson, at the age of 92. The Optimist's Daughter won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973. In 1992 Welty was awarded the Rea Award for the Short Story for her lifetime contributions to the American short story. The book immediately established Welty as one of American literature's leading lights and featured the legendary short stories A Worn Path, Why I Live at the P.O., and Petrified Man, all of which have been included in many short story anthologies and literature text books through the years. Her work attracted the attention of Katherine Anne Porter, who became a mentor to her and wrote the foreword to Welty's first collection of short stories, A Curtain of Green, in 1941.
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Her first short story, Death of a Traveling Salesman, appeared in 1936. Welty's true love was literature, not photography, and she soon devoted her energy to writing fiction. Collections of her photographs are One Time, One Place and Photographs. This job sent her all over the state of Mississippi photographing people from all economic and social classes.
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While at Columbia University, she also was the captain of the women's polo team.ĭuring the 1930s, Welty worked as a photographer for the Works Progress Administration. She was educated at the Mississippi State College for Women (now called Mississippi University for Women), the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Columbia University's business school. Welty was born in Jackson, Mississippi and lived a significant portion of her life in the city's Belhaven neighborhood, where her home has been preserved. Eudora Welty was an award-winning writer and photographer who wrote about the American South.