Short biography willa cather

Cather was born in Back Creek Valley, Virginia, on December 7, 1873, the eldest of an eventual seven children raised by Charles and Mary Virginia Cather. Cathers had been in the area since the 1700s, and Back Creek, near Winchester west of Washington, was a place deeply affected by the Civil War. It was a border area, one of the counties in Virginia adjacent to the new state of West Virginia, and the contending armies had vied for control there (Winchester shifted between sides multiple times). The Cathers, who had a sheep farm, were sympathetic to the Union and some of Cather's relations were officials of the reconstruction. Emotions ran deep and the effects of the tumult were slow healing. 

Photograph of Willa as a young girl, taken in Richmond, Virginia

In this place Cather's first litmus years were impressed with memories of rural Virginia and of the deep culture of the South while the war's discord, still near at hand when Cather lived there, remained

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Willa Cather

American writer (1873–1947)

Willa Sibert Cather (;^[1] born Wilella Sibert Cather;^[2] December 7, 1873^[A] – April 24, 1947) was an American writer known for her novels of life on the Great Plains, including O Pioneers!, The Song of the Lark, and My Ántonia. In 1923, she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for One of Ours, a novel set during World War I.

Willa Cather and her family moved from Virginia to Webster County, Nebraska, when she was nine years old. The family later settled in the town of Red Cloud. Shortly after graduating from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, Cather moved to Pittsburgh for ten years, supporting herself as a magazine editor and high school English teacher. At the age of 33, she moved to New York City, her primary home for the rest of her life, though she also traveled widely and spent considerable time at her summer residence on Grand Manan Island, New Brunswick. She spent the last 39 years of h

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Short Biography of Willa Cather

Willa Cather was born in Back Creek Valley, Virginia, in 1873. When Cather was nine years old, her family moved to rural Webster County, Nebraska, and later to the town of Red Cloud, where she lived until attending college at the University of Nebraska.

Cather’s career began in Pittsburgh, where she spent a decade working as a journalist and teacher. She later relocated to New York City, and by 1908 was the managing editor at McClure’s Magazine. After the publication of her first novel, Alexander’s Bridge, Cather left the magazine to focus full-time on her own writing.

In subsequent decades Cather wrote prolifically. Her writing conveyed an intimate understanding of her characters in relation to their personal and cultural environments. While six of Cather’s novels were inspired by her Nebraska experiences, her writing spans settings that also include the desert Southwest, seventeenth century Quebec, and the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, among