Oct 6, 2021 | Literary Landscapes, Nature, Novelists, Volume 4
WILLA CATHER The MesaTaos, New Mexico By Tracy Tucker I am an American pilgrim. I’ve visited a hundred holy sites trying to find my way, seeking an intercession, hoping to meet my gods in the air. I’ve found myself at Walden Pond, naturally, and the stone wall at...
Oct 5, 2021 | Author Houses, Literary Landscapes, Nebraska, Novelists, Volume 4
WILLA CATHER Pavelka FarmsteadRed Cloud, Nebraska By Christine Pivovar Willa Cather’s My Ántonia (1918) contains the first written use of the word “kolaches” in English, according to the OED. It comes in at the end of the novel, when the narrator, Jim,...
Oct 5, 2021 | Literary Landscapes, Nature, Nebraska, Novelists, Volume 4
WILLA CATHER Glacier Creek PreserveOmaha, Nebraska By Conor Gearin “The red of the grass made all the great prairie the color of wine-stains, or of certain seaweeds when they are first washed up.” One of Willa Cather’s most famous lines, from the 1918 novel My...
Oct 5, 2021 | Graves, Literary Landscapes, Novelists, Volume 4
WILLA CATHER Old Burying GroundJaffrey, New Hampshire By Catherine Seiberling Pond In her first known correspondence from Jaffrey, New Hampshire, Willa Cather wrote to her brother Roscoe on a postcard from the Shattuck Inn, “I am working well in this lovely country.”...
Oct 5, 2021 | Illinois, Literary Landscapes, Novelists, Schools, Volume 4
WILLA CATHER The Fine Arts BuildingChicago, Illinois By Jesse Raber Chicago isn’t an iconic setting for Willa Cather, the great novelist of the prairies. Yet, in a sense, during Cather’s time Chicago writing was prairie writing. When H.L. Mencken crowned...
