Willa Cather

Willa Cather was an American writer born on 7 December 1873 in Gore, Virginia, and she died on 24 April 1947. As a child she moved to the Nebraska prairie, an experience of open land and immigrant neighbours that shaped much of her best work. She worked as a teacher and magazine editor before turning fully to fiction in her late thirties.

Cather wrote clear, quiet prose about pioneers, artists and the changing American West and Southwest. Her novels often honour ordinary endurance, memory and the bond between people and place. She won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1923 for One of Ours. Books such as O Pioneers!, My Ántonia and Death Comes for the Archbishop remain widely read for their calm beauty and their respect for lives lived close to the land.