Users' Guide: A Word from the Editor

Reynolds Price, who died on January 20, 2011, was first and foremost as fine a human being as we are likely to ever know. He was also Eudora Welty's great friend, a memorable teacher, and a hugely talented writer of more than a dozen novels, six collections of short stories, poetry, plays, memoirs, and astounding nonfiction—work that changes lives. We offer a modest tribute to this kind, funny, and generous man with comments by Josephine Humphreys, Lee Smith, and Suzanne Marrs. Their pieces reveal both their relationships with Price and the richness of his gifts. Additionally, John Bayne, author of "Collecting Eudora Welty," has prepared a checklist of published comments between Price and Welty.

We are delighted to offer an excerpt concerning The Ponder Heart from Suzanne Marrs's eagerly awaited edition of the correspondence between Welty and William Maxwell, who was Welty's friend and her editor at the New Yorker. What There Is to Say We Have Said will be published in May 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

This issue of the Eudora Welty Review looks back to Welty's centennial year of 2009 and forward to new critical assessments of the author's writing and photographs. In 2009, Rosella Mamoli Zorzi and I organized the Eudora Welty Centenary International Conference in Venice, Italy. I am pleased to include in this issue of the Eudora Welty Review several essays revised from conference presentations (by Alison Goeller, Jan Nordby Gretlund, Carol Ann Johnston, Monica Pavani, Peggy Prenshaw, and Rosella Mamoli Zorzi), each revealing new, twenty-first-century perspectives of Welty's writing. The conference was also an opportunity for Italian fiction writer Elisabetta Rasy, author of Memories of a Night-time Woman Reader, to reflect upon her first reading of Delta Wedding. An English translation of her essay is included here. Some of the other essays that originated at centennial celebrations can be read in the online journal Transatlantica (see Catherine Chengges's "Checklist of Scholarship").

Lorinda Cohoon contributes a cultural studies perspective on Delta Wedding and two short stories by "reading" characters' shoes in conjunction with ladies' magazine advertisements. Adrienne Akins writes about Losing Battles using postcolonial theories of cartography and education. Daniel Wood shows us much that we have missed in our sociopolitical readings of "Where Is the Voice Coming From?" We anticipate Minrose Gwin's current scholarly project—Mourning Medgar Evers, a study of the many aesthetic responses to Medgar Evers's assassination that have since impinged upon the cultural memorialization of the event—to give us yet other perspectives.

I call your attention to a new Welty photography exhibit, Exposures and Reflections, curated by Jacob Laurence of the Museum of Mobile. Leigh Kirkland reviews the exhibit at the Atlanta History Center venue; it is scheduled thereafter for Decatur, Alabama, and Columbus, Mississippi. It is my understanding that Exposures and Reflections is available for additional exhibition for the shipping and handling costs, arranged with Laurence. Geraldine Chouard's "Welty at 100" in Transatlantica (2.2009, online) includes several Welty photographs selected and commented upon by various scholars.

The Practical Matters section of EWR includes updates from the various constituencies collaborating in the enrichment and promotion of Welty's materials and legacy: The Welty Foundation, House and Garden, Collection at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, and Society. We've added here news about archives that may have materials pertinent to the study of Welty's work. Don't miss the society column report of a 1921 wedding, another sort of archival finding, contributed by Malinda Snow.

As has been the case since the inaugural issues of the Eudora Welty Newsletter in Winter and Summer 1977, we continue checklists of Works by Welty and Welty Scholarship. Please take note also of the Ruth Vande Keift Award, sponsored by the Eudora Welty Society and EWR, to encourage submissions.