March 12 | Eudora Welty’s Correspondence: The Life of an Artist, the Art of Letter Writing - College of Charleston Libraries
A discussion of Eudora Welty’s letters, especially her correspondence with lifelong friend Frank Lyell. The letters feature humorous vignettes, cultural and political commentary, and Welty’s offhandedly sparkling prose.
Julia Eichelberger leads a discussion of the art of letter writing, a genre threatened by the proliferation of instant communication through email and mobile phones. Welty’s letters are a joyful celebration of spontaneity, friendship, frustrations, absurdities, and everyday life.
When: Tuesday, March 12 | 12:00 pm
Where: Addlestone Library Rm. 227
Tickets: FREE and open to the public. Registration is required. Lunch will be provided.
Julia Eichelberger joined the College of Charleston English Department in 1992 and now directs the College’s interdisciplinary minor in Southern Studies. In addition to courses in Southern Studies and Southern literature, she has taught courses on African American literature, Jewish American writers, Charleston writers, twentieth-century fiction and poetry, and Mississippi writer Eudora Welty, as well as first-year writing. She has published essays in Mississippi Quarterly, Studies in American Jewish Literature, Southern Literary Journal, and the Eudora Welty Review, and most recently in the collection Eudora Welty, Whiteness, and Race, edited by Harriet Pollack (University of Georgia Press, 2013). Her first book, Prophets of Recognition: Ideology and the Individual in Novels by Ellison, Morrison, Bellow, and Welty, was published by LSU Press. For her second book, Tell About Night Flowers: Eudora Welty’s Gardening Letters, 1940-1949 (University of Mississippi Press), she selected, edited, and annotated letters Welty wrote to two close friends who shared her love of gardening. Many letters were previously unpublished and discussed Welty’s work in progress. She co-edited Teaching the Works of Eudora Welty: Twenty-first Century Approaches (University of Mississippi Press). She was the winner of the Eudora Welty Society’s 2016 Phoenix Award for her scholarship on Welty.
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