Eudora Welty Foundation

Throughout 2019, the Eudora Welty Foundation coordinated and produced inspiring and educational programs and events and funded research endeavors to support the preservation and appreciation of the gifts of Eudora Welty—her literary and photographic treasures as well as the Eudora Welty House and Garden and the Welty Collection at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History. Scholars, writers, students, and the general public benefit from the work of the Foundation. Many activities are carried out in collaboration with cosponsors and partners.

NEH Grant Supports MDAH Welty Collection Digitization

In April 2019, the Mississippi Department of Archives and History (MDAH) received a $217,982 implementation grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to preserve, digitize, and enhance access to the papers in its Eudora Welty Collection. The Welty Foundation is providing the MDAH required matching contribution for the grant.

The two-year project is conserving 60 items and compiling metadata for more than 19,800 scans of items in the collection. Manuscripts, correspondence, photographs, and sound recordings are being digitized. An online catalog will be created to facilitate research in these materials.

Beginning in 1957 and for over more than 40 years, Welty donated materials to MDAH, mainly manuscripts and photographs. After her death in 2001, the remainder of her papers, including unpublished manuscripts and 14,000 items of correspondence were bequeathed to the agency. These materials are the premier collection of Welty materials in the world.

Poet Natasha Trethewey Offers 2019 Bettye Jolly Lecture

Pulitzer Prize-winner and two-time Poet Laureate of the United States Natasha Trethewey delivered the 2019 Bettye Jolly Lecture to an overflow crowd at the Welty House and Garden on March 8. She spoke about her craft and her life and read from her latest book, Monument, which was longlisted for the 2018 National Book Award. A Mississippi native, Trethewey is Board of Trustees Professor of English at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.

Trethewey answered questions from the audience and was engaged in conversation by Welty scholar Suzanne Marrs, who also introduced her. Marrs asked Trethewey to discuss her experience writing the foreword for the revised publication of Eudora Welty's Photographs, (UP of Mississippi), which was released the following month.

The author of five poetry collections and a memoir, Trethewey was the 2012–16 Poet Laureate of Mississippi. She was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2013 and received the Heinz Award for Arts and Humanities in 2017. In 2018, Trethewey traveled across the nation for the PBS "NewsHour" series "Where Poetry Lives."

The endowed Bettye Jolly Lecture honors the late Bettye Jolly, a longtime volunteer and supporter of the Eudora Welty House and Garden. Contributions may be made to the Bettye Jolly Lecture through the Eudora Welty Foundation. The lecture was founded by a book club which grew out of a Millsaps Great Topics Seminar taught by Marrs. Jolly was a dedicated member of the book club. Past lecturers have been Lee Smith, Rosanna Warren, Beth Henley, and Alice McDermott. The 2020 Lecture will be delivered by poet, short story writer, and novelist Ron Rash (postponed until further notice).

Revised Welty's Photographs Released on Thirtieth Anniversary

On April 13, 2019, 30 years to the date of the book's first release and Eudora's 110th birthday, a new revised edition of Eudora Welty Photographs, published by University Press of Mississippi, was celebrated at the Eudora Welty House and Garden. In hardback again for the first time in 30 years, the book also includes 16 photographs not included in the original publication.

The Foundation-sponsored event featured a panel discussion moderated by Welty friend and biographer Suzanne Marrs. Panelists were Holmes Adams, Welty Foundation Board Chair; Seetha Srinivasan, director of University Press of Mississippi when the first Photographs was published; Craig Gill, current director of University Press; and Mary Alice Welty White, Eudora's niece, first director of the Welty House, and Foundation board secretary.

A special feature of the program was a video interview with Eudora conducted by noted journalist and Welty friend Roger Mudd about the book's first publication, broadcast on the...