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It is my pleasure to announce that Professor Harriet Pollack of Bucknell University has been selected as the 2008 recipient of the Phoenix Award, given on occasion by the Eudora Welty Society to an individual whose contributions to Welty Studies have been exceptional.

In selecting Harriet for this year’s award, the officers of the Welty Society and past recipients of the Phoenix Award extend appreciation for her contributions to Welty scholarship, the Society, and to the larger community of Welty’s students and admirers.

Harriet’s has been a major shaping voice in all things Weltean with two important edited collections of essays, /Having Our Way: Women Rewriting Tradition in Twentieth-Century America /(1995), and, with Suzanne Marrs, /Eudora Welty and Politics: Did the Writer Crusade?/ (2001). This Award also recognizes the invaluable contribution of her own essays and, in particular, the 1998 Kirby Award-winning essay, “Photographic Convention and Story Composition: Eudora Welty's Use of Detail, Plot, Genre and Expectation From ‘A Worn Path’ Through ‘Bride of The Innisfallen’” (1997), a ground-breaking study of the intersection of photographic and narrative ways of seeing in Welty’s work.

Harriet held the posts of vice-president from 1994-1996 and president from 1996-1998. She organized, with Suzanne Marrs, the hugely successful 1997 Welty conference in Jackson, stories from which are still joyfully circulating among those who were there. She is now organizing yet another academic conference scheduled for 2009 in Jackson—sure to be another signature event in Welty Studies. She remains one of the most active members of the Welty Society and one whose counsel is invaluable.

"A perfect choice, I'd say," Suzanne Marrs writes, and we all, judging from the comments that accompanied the votes, enthusiastically agree. The presentation of the Phoenix Award will be held next spring at either the Society for the Study of Southern Literature meeting in Williamsburg or the American Literature Association meeting in San Francisco.

Instead of extending congratulations to Harriet, I’ll extend congratulations to the Eudora Welty Society for the good fortune we have in counting Harriet Pollack among our number. If you would like to send her a note, her e-mail address is pollack@bucknell.edu.

Very truly yours,
Barbara Ladd
President, Eudora Welty Society

The Eudora Welty society is pleased to announce the formation of the Eudora Welty Centenary Speakers Bureau for 2009. The Speakers Bureau will list potential lecturers, scholars, and teachers willing to go to universities and other institutions during 2009, to observe the 100th anniversary of Eudora Welty’s birth and to celebrate her place in American fiction. The speakers’ topics may include a wide range of subjects from critical and theoretical issues in Welty’s work to textual and bibliographical studies to her photography, from her autobiographical writings to her biographies.

We are currently seeking speakers who have addressed audiences at academic conferences, library symposia, book clubs, museums, schools, and universities to reprise their presentations in the 2009 Eudora Welty Centenary year on behalf of the Eudora Welty Society and the Eudora Welty Foundation.

Host institions will pay an honorarium in addition to the speaker’s travel and lodging expenses. We are encouraging speakers to donate a portion of their honorarium to the Eudora Welty Foundation to further the work of Welty Studies. We invite interested speakers to send a brief bio (100 words or less), one to three lecture topics, and contact information to The Mississippi Quarterly at nep27@msstate.edu or missq@missq.msstate.edu. Institutions will contact scholars directly for arrangements. The Speakers’ Bureau will be listed on the Eudora Welty Foundation webpage with links from EWS, Eudora Welty Newsletter and The Mississippi Quarterly.

Call for Papers for Eudora Welty Centenary Issue of the Mississippi Quarterly

The fourth special topics Welty issue of MQ will celebrate the centenary of the author’s birth, April 13, 1909. The issue will afford new and seasoned scholars the opportunity to reconsider Welty’s remarkable career: the genres that she explored; the historical or private context that affected her work; the writing communities of her time and of those she influenced. Thematic, theoretical, and comparative approaches are welcome, as are new topics and revisions of previous readings, additions to the biographical or textual record, and suggestions for future scholarly work. For Spring 2009 publication, please submit completed essays by May 1, 2008 to Pearl McHaney, pmchaney@gsu.edu. Inquiries and discussions prior to submission are welcome.

The Eudora Welty House opened to the public beginning with a special free preview weekend April 29 and 30, 2006. Already a National Historic Landmark, the Welty House is one of the nation's most intact literary house museums, reflecting Welty's life there over seventy-six years. After the opening weekend, the Eudora Welty House, located at 1119 Pinehurst Street in Jackson, will be shown by reservation only Wednesdays through Fridays at 9 and 11 a.m. and 1 and 3 p.m.

Welty left her house and collection of thousands of books to the state, and the Welty family donated furniture and art. Visitors will see Welty's house as she lived in it.

(from the Eudora Welty House Website)

A new print depicting writer Eudora Welty is available for purchase. The woodcut, the first in a series of five, is by longtime Welty friend and collaborator Barry Moser, a National Book Award-winning illustrator. Moser is donating the prints to the Mississippi Department of Archives and History to raise money to support the Eudora Welty House, which will open in summer 2005...

For more information, visit the Mississippi Department of Archives and History: Eudora Welty House News page, or visit the MDAH homepage here.

The Eudora Welty Society is distinct from the Eudora Welty Newsletter. Please contact the editor with inquiries about the newsletter: Pearl McHaney, Department of English, Georgia State University, University Plaza, Atlanta, GA 30303-2900; or visit the EWNewsletter website.