Join us for cake and a talk by Dr. Robert Thacker, president of the Willa Cather Foundation.  

When people now speak of the leading American writers of the first half of the twentieth century, such names as Faulkner, Fitzgerald, and Hemingway are prominent. Yet during the generation before these figures emerged in the 1920s a dominant voice was found in the writing of Willa Cather (1873-1947); her frequent appearances from her publisher Alfred A. Knopf that decade (seven books, 1920-27) confirmed and cemented the reputation her prairie-plains novels (O Pioneers! [1913], The Song of the Lark [1915], and especially My Ántonia [1918]) had established the decade before. By the 1920s, Cather was this country’s leading novelist, with each book different from the one before. We are in the midst of the centenaries of these books and about to celebrate the sesquicentennial of Cather’s birth. This talk will address her achievements as the leading American writer of the first half of the twentieth century.