Eudora Welty House & Garden

#WeltyatHome: A Curtain of Green cmckenzie Mon, 11/06/2023 - 16:31

#WeltyatHome: A Curtain of Green. Readers are invited to tune in with Suzanne Marrs, Eudora Welty's friend and biographer, for an online discussion of Eudora Welty's short story collection, A Curtain of Green and Other Stories

This series will continue weekly on Mondays, December 4, 11, and 18; January 22 and 29; and February 5 and 12.

An Evening with Ron Rash cmckenzie Mon, 09/18/2023 - 09:09
Join us for a reading with Ron Rash on Friday, September 29, at 5 p.m. at the Eudora Welty House & Garden. Rash will read from and sign copies of his new book, The Caretaker. Rash is also the author of the 2009 PEN/Faulkner finalist and New York Times bestseller Serena and Above the Waterfall.
Live Jazz in the Welty Garden cmckenzie Wed, 09/06/2023 - 15:34

Join us for Live Jazz in the Welty Garden at 5 p.m. on Thursday, October 19, at the Eudora Welty House & Garden. This event will feature free, live music from the Mississippi College Jazz Band in the beautiful garden that inspired many of Welty's Pulitzer Prize-winning stories. The grounds open at 5 p.m., and music starts at 5:30 p.m. Blankets and lawn chairs are encouraged. Games and a children’s station will be set up in the yard. Free lemonade and popcorn will be available. Additionally, guests can purchase food and drinks from Urban Foxes.

Yoga in the Welty Garden cmckenzie Wed, 09/06/2023 - 14:30
Bring your mats for free, adult yoga classes on Tuesdays in October from 7 to 7:30 a.m. with certified yoga instructor Alexia P. Hammonds. For more information, visit welty.mdah.ms.gov/events or call 601-353-7762.
#WeltyatHome: Remembering Medgar Evers cmckenzie Tue, 08/29/2023 - 16:29

Readers are invited to tune in with Suzanne Marrs, Eudora Welty's friend and biographer, and for an online discussion of works inspired by Medgar Evers. This series will continue weekly discussions on Mondays, September 18, 25, and October 2, 9, 16, and 23. For more information, visit https://welty.mdah.ms.gov/events, or email info@eudoraweltyhouse.com

Storytime on the Side Porch cmckenzie Tue, 05/02/2023 - 11:30

Join us for Storytime on the Side Porch at the Eudora Welty House & Garden. The Eudora Welty House & Garden will present free summer book readings and activities for children in partnership with the Mississippi Library Commission. This series will continue weekly on Thursdays June 8, 15, 22, and 29. For more information, visit https://welty.mdah.ms.gov/events, or email info@eudoraweltyhouse.com.

Eudora Welty House & Garden Unveils Renovated Potting Shed cmckenzie Thu, 03/23/2023 - 08:28

The Mississippi Department of Archives and History (MDAH) is pleased to announce the opening of the Eudora Welty House & Garden (EWHG) Potting Shed. The Garden Club of Jackson awarded a grant to the Eudora Welty Foundation to renovate the interior of the Welty family garage, which was originally built along with the family home in 1925 and has been converted into a much-needed potting shed and workshop.

“For the first time, this potting shed allows our garden volunteers, Cereus Weeders, a proper, dedicated space with the right equipment they need to do the weekly, hands-on work of preserving the Welty garden,” said Jessica Russell, EWHG director. “It also provides the EWHG a special opportunity to serve our local community.

Both Eudora Welty’s prose and personal correspondence are rich with imagery from the natural world. Eudora Welty once said, “I wish I had a sign to tell me what I had better do that day, write or work in the garden.”

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author mentioned in her published works more than 150 types of plants and flowers, many of which grow around her home to this day.

For Eudora Welty, gardening was not a distraction from her writing; it was an inspiration for it. Her biographer, Dr. Suzanne Marrs, observed that for Welty, “the garden and writing were linked at some profound level.”

The design team, Arkansas-based company Natural State Design, LLC (NSD), hand-selected aged materials, board by board, to blend with the building’s historic period. NSD worked closely with Welty staff and retired garden consultant Susan Haltom to meet a wide variety of needs and purposes.

Today, the Welty garden is largely maintained by the dedicated “Cereus Weeders,” a volunteer organization named after Eudora Welty’s Night-Blooming Cereus Club, a group of friends who frequently entertained themselves by attending Night-Blooming Cereus flower-watching parties in Jackson in the 1930s.

For more information call 601-576-6934 or email info@mdah.ms.gov.

 

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Ann Fisher-Wirth Signing cmckenzie Mon, 03/20/2023 - 13:13

Join the Eudora Welty House & Garden for a reading and book signing with Ann Fisher-Wirth at 5 p.m. on Thursday, April 20. Fisher-Wirth will read from her seventh book of poems, Paradise Is Jagged, released in February (Terrapin Books). Sales on site through Lemuria Books. This event is free and open to the public. For more information, call 601-353-7762, or email info@eudoraweltyhouse.com.

 

Eudora Welty Digital Archives Launches Online

Mississippi Department of Archives and History (MDAH) is pleased to announce that The Eudora Welty Digital Archives is now available to the public on the MDAH website. This digitization project was funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities with a matching contribution from the Eudora Welty Foundation

The Eudora Welty Digital Archives represents only a sample of Welty-related material housed at MDAH and features selections of correspondence, manuscripts, photographs, and other media related to Eudora Welty (1909-2001), master of the short story and one of America's greatest authors. 

"MDAH is grateful to the National Endowment for the Humanities for their generous grant which allowed for the construction of the world's most extensive digital archive of Eudora Welty materials," said Katie Blount, director of MDAH. "We are excited to share this incredible resource with researchers and fans of Eudora Welty."

Eudora Welty had a long relationship with the MDAH, making her first donation of manuscripts, papers, and photographs in 1957, and continuing to donate throughout her life. In addition to documents, the collection includes the house where Welty lived most of her life and wrote her greatest works, her furniture, art, and books, and the garden in which she worked alongside her mother. The complete collection is accessible at the MDAH.

Eudora Welty was born on April 13, 1909, the daughter of Christian Webb Welty and Chestina Andrews Welty. In 1925 the family moved to 1119 Pinehurst Street in Jackson, where Welty would reside until her death. Welty graduated from Jackson's Central High School in 1925, attended Mississippi State College for Women, University of Wisconsin, and Columbia University in New York City.

She received a Guggenheim Fellowship and the 1973 Pulitzer Prize for her book, The Optimist's Daughter—originally published in The New Yorker in 1969. Welty was also an accomplished photographer.

From 1955 to 1970, Eudora Welty published two short stories dealing with the Civil Rights Movement, "Where Is the Voice Coming From?" and "The Demonstrators," and worked on scenes for a novel while caring for her family.  

Eudora Welty died in Jackson on July 23, 2001. 

Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this database do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.                              

For more information call 601-576-6850, or email info@mdah.ms.gov.   

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MDAH Closures for Christmas and New Years

MDAH offices and archives library will be closed Friday, December 23 to Monday, December 26. All museum sites will close at 2 p.m. on Saturday, December 24, and reopen on Tuesday, December 27.

The archives library will be closed on Saturday, December 31, and all museums will close at 2 p.m. on Saturday, December 31, and reopen on Tuesday, January 3. MDAH offices will also be closed on Monday, January 2.

Visit www.mdah.ms.gov/explore-mississippi for more information about our one-of-a-kind museums, historical sites and cultural attractions throughout the state. Explore our wide ranging Digital Archives herehttps://da.mdah.ms.gov/.

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