I also recently learned that she wrote for her high school newspaper, as I did. NYC felt like the perfect place to delve into her story because we both attended graduate school there-her Alma Mater Columbia and mine NYU-and we both lived there for a while, my stint quite a bit longer than hers. Eudora Welty, third from left standing, at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference in 1940. During a recent trip to New York City, I chose Welty to be my companion, packing several books and two journalistic pieces by and about this famous southern author. I often base entire trips around these life-stories. The essays were initially given as lectures to graduate students at Harvard University in 1983 so when I read the pieces I can imagine them delivered in her soft southern drawl: “Through travel I first became aware of the outside world it was through travel that I found my own introspective way into becoming part of it.” I spend an inordinate amount of time reading biographies and autobiographies because I am fascinated by how others who are notable enough to be memorialized lived. Fast as our speed was, it gave us time enough to see the rose-red cinders turn to ash, each one, and disappear from sight.” Each section of the book brings bits and pieces of her early years in Jackson, Mississippi, to life. We watched the sparks we made fly behind us into the night. Her descriptions of the trip are alive with the nuance and character that landed her a number of awards, including a Pulitzer Prize: “After dinner in the sparkling dining car, my father and I walked back to the open-air observation platform at the end of the train and sat on the folding chairs placed at the railing. Image courtesy The Eudora Welty Foundation. It’s an anecdote that opens the chapter in the book titled “Finding a Voice.” Eudora Welty Finds Her Voice Eudora Welty as a young woman on the platform of the Sunset Limited, the Amtrak train that travels between Louisiana and California. In her memoir, One Writer’s Beginnings, Eudora Welty describes how travel helped her awaken to what it means to embrace a broader reality, writing about a train ride she took with her father when she was ten.
Eudora welty listening how to#
When a writer begins to grapple with how to mine the outside world for inspiration, the process can be challenging. Eudora Welty, left, with her mom and siblings.