Eudora Welty Foundation

"Welty and the Craft of Writing"

The National Endowment for the Arts/Comcast Foundation-funded Welty media resource kit for teachers has been distributed to 400 teachers nationwide. The project received an award of merit from the Mississippi Historical Society at its annual meeting in March 2011.

The kit contains a DVD of rare films of Welty reading "Why I Live at the P. O.," "A Worn Path," and "Petrified Man" as well as interviews with Welty by Richard O. Moore, the producer of the films. The kit also includes a companion interactive CD-Rom with manuscripts, correspondence, and photographs related to each story. These materials are part of the Welty Collection at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History. A teacher guide and bibliography are included on the CD as well as on the Welty Foundation website: www.eudorawelty.org. Additional Welty teaching resources are housed on the website.

Teachers in thirty-five states have requested the kit—from Maine to California and from North Dakota to Arizona. The National Council of Teachers of English helped with national awareness by placing a notice about the kit on its website.

Requests have come not only from teachers of American literature and creative writing in high school but from teachers in elementary school, college, and even a juvenile detention facility. The variety of courses in which the kit is being used include Reading, World Literature, Journalism, Literary Magazine Staff, Mississippi Writers, Mississippi History, Learning Strategies, English Language and Composition, Publishing, Upward Bound, Art, Southern Literature, Short Story, Language Arts, Humanities, Fine Arts, Library, cross-curricular courses, and many AP, honors, and gifted classes.

Students from Georgia State University provided transcripts of the interviews, and Mississippi Public Broadcasting produced the captioning.

Eudora Welty Playwriting Workshop

The Foundation received applications from a broad spectrum of aspiring playwrights to participate in the Welty Playwriting Workshop to be held June 1-4, 2011, at Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi, to be conducted by award-winning playwright Alfred Uhry.

Applicants were from Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kansas, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Nevada, New York, North Carolina, Ireland, and Quebec, Canada.

Applicants submitted writing samples (either a one act play or one act from a longer play) that were judged by a panel of theater professionals and writers. Five participants will be selected. Each will adapt a Eudora Welty short story of his or her choice for the stage.

Four New Members Named to Welty National Advisory Board

Four new members of the National Advisory Board will be welcomed at the board's joint meeting with the Eudora Welty Foundation on April 15-16, 2011, in Oxford, Mississippi. New members are Nancy Bierman, Dallas, Texas; Eric Etheridge, New York, New York; Randall Pinkston, Teaneck, New Jersey; and Lee Smith, Hillsborough, North Carolina.

Bierman is a dedicated community leader and volunteer; Etheridge is a photographer/editor/website designer; Pinkston is a correspondent for the CBS evening news and other network broadcasts; and Smith is an award-winning, best-selling author of 15 works of fiction.

Book on Correspondence of Welty and William Maxwell Forthcoming in May

Suzanne Marrs, Welty biographer and Welty Foundation Scholar-in Residence at Millsaps College, has edited the letters between the long-time editor of The New Yorker and Eudora Welty from their friendship of 50 years. The volume—What There Is to Say We Have Said: The Correspondence of Eudora Welty and William Maxwell (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)—will be released May 12. Marrs will appear on the Diane Rehm Show on National Public Radio on May 10.