Eudora Welty Centennial

Eudora Welty 1909-2001

She was beloved by many, respected by all. Jackson born writer Eudora Welty would have turned 100-years-old this week.
As MPB’s arts reporter Ron Brown tells us, fans and friends from all over the world are in Mississippi to mark the occasion.

Waldemar Zacharasiewicz traveled five thousand two hundred and eighty miles to get to where he is right now.. a library on the campus of Millsaps college in Jackson. A professor of American literature at the University of Vienna in Austria, Zacharasiewicz came to Jackson because of a woman.

The woman Zacharasiewicz desires is the late Pulitzer Prize winning author, and beloved Mississippi writer Eudora Welty.
He is in love with her published work.

“Just the skill. This talent. This genius of presenting the consciousness as it were of such a wide range of character.”

Scholars from near and far are in Mississippi for a special week-long celebration of what would have been Welty’s 100th birthday. There are tribute concerts, literary conferences, and on Monday, a cake cutting at the Welty home and museum.
Welty niece Mary Alice Welty White says her famous aunt would have wondered what all the fuss was about.

“She would probably be a little embarrassed. She was a very humble person But she would be glad so many arts were being celebrated because of her birthday.”

Welty’s enduring appeal is in part because she was far from a one dimensional artist. Besides her printed work, The New Stage Theater is producing a play based upon Welty’s “The Ponder Heart” this week, in honor of the centennial.
Director Francine Thomas Reynolds says Welty’s work translates well to the stage.

“What’s important about Eudora Welty of course is the language. And that’s really fun, because you don’t hear that in other plays and that’s what makes it unique and special.”

Peggy Crenshaw is the humanities scholar in residence at Millsaps College where Welty once taught creative writing.
She believes the interest in Welty has yet to peak and will continue to endure for many years to come. .

“Well in the first place she is very much revered not only locally but nationally and internationally. And I think that the celebrity and respect comes from her unusual ability to create characters. She has the kind of imagination that allows her, as she wrote one time, to enter into another person’s skin.”

“Eudora Welty has been very much acclaimed and honored in France.”

Daniele Pitavy-Souques is considered to be the Welty scholar in Europe. She is a much sought after speaker on Welty and naturally was invited to appear in Jackson at a Welty centennial conference. For her, the Pulitzer prize winning author is awe inspiring.

“In a way, Eudora Welty invented so many new forms of writing, so many new ways of considering fiction and the responsibility of the writer that writers started writing differently.”

Another well known writer also sings Welty’s praises, literally. Mary Chapin Carpenter’s song “Halley Comes to Jackson” was inspired by a family story told by Eudora Welty. Carpenter came to Jackson too, to headline a special concert at Belhaven Center for the Arts. Welty’s legacy also is responsible for bringing former NBC anchorman Roger Mudd to town to appear with The Mississippi Symphony Orchestra in a performance called simply; Adoring Eudora.

That’s something readers and scholars from all over the world have been doing for a long time now, and likely something they’ll continue, for the next one hundred years. For MPB News, I’m Ron Brown.