Monday, April 13, 2009, the Maier Museum celebrated the life and art of Eudora Alice Welty (April 13, 1909–July 23, 2001).

If you missed it, or want to hear it all over again, listen to English professor and poet, Wendy Miles, read an except from Welty’s short story Why I Live at the P.O. at the party! Audio and video by Jeffrey Alan Reid:

Eudora Welty’s Why I Live at the P.O.

Welty was an award-winning American author and photographer who documented and interpreted the American South. During the 1930s, Welty worked for the Works Progress Administration photographing Mississippi residents from all economic and social classes.

Welty’s true love was literature, and she soon devoted her energy to writing fiction. Her first short story, “Death of a Traveling Salesman,” appeared in 1936. Her first collection of short stories, A Curtain of Green, was published in 1941 and featured the acclaimed stories “Why I Live at the P.O.,” “Petrified Man,” and “A Worn Path.” Her novel, The Optimist’s Daughter, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973.

Welty had strong connections to Randolph-Macon Woman’s College. She first came to R‑MWC in 1927 as a junior transfer student.

Upon her arrival she learned that, because not all her credits would transfer, she would have to repeat her sophomore year. Unable to afford an extra year of college, she left Randolph-Macon after only three days. She bought a train ticket and, by her own account, “rode weeping across the James” transferring to the University of Wisconsin-Madison where she would graduate.

In 1981 she was writer-in-residence at R‑MWC, and in 1982 she received a rare honorary Doctor of Letters from the College. She returned to campus on April 9, 1988, to present a reading as part of commemorative events surrounding Linda Lorimer’s inauguration.

The Maier Museum of Art’s photograph by William Eggleston entitled Eudora Welty’s Kitchen will be on display for this festive occasion. Learn about Eggleston, another Southern artist whose work explores Southern culture. Randolph College English professors will be among the revelers, with Professor Wendy Miles reading excerpts from Welty’s writings. Enjoy birthday cake lovingly prepared using a recipe that George Washington University Professor of English Anne Romines created from references in Eudora Welty’s Delta Wedding.