WILLA CATHER CONFERENCE EDITION!
Greetings from Historic Red Cloud: Great Stories Grow Here!
Set amid brick-lined streets, charming homes, historic buildings, and the immense beauty of the prairie, Red Cloud offers a glimpse into a storied American past while maintaining a progressive vision for the future. Great stories start in Red Cloud--add your own chapter today!
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67th Spring Willa Cather Conference Preview
The 2022 Spring Conference will be even more special than usual since it will be the first mostly in-person conference since 2019! Red Cloud should be bustling during the first weekend of June and conference goers will be encouraged to shop and eat at local establishments as the Banquet on Saturday evening will be the only catered meal available meal to registrants.
The conference will also mark the publication centenary of Cather’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel One of Ours. The three-day conference, "Literary Prizes: Acclaim and Controversy," will feature Dr. James F. English, author of The Economy of Prestige: Prizes, Awards, and the Circulation of Cultural Value. The impacts of the literary award industry on authors' lives and legacies, their books, and their readers will be examined.
The conference will also feature Maureen Corrigan from NPR's Fresh Air. Corrigan is America’s most trusted and beloved book critic. She is the author of two books of her own; Leave me Alone I’m Reading and So We Read On: How the Great Gatsby Came to Be and Why it Endures, which was named one of the ten best books of the year by Library Journal.
Another highlight will be a performance by the Nebraska Chamber Players. Composer Chris Ellenwood’s new composition, Children of the Moon, is based on Willa Cather’s One of Ours which celebrates its 100th publication anniversary in 2022. Featuring Nebraska’s own Brian Leeper as vocalist, Nebraska Chamber Players will perform Children of the Moon on Saturday, June 4, in the Red Cloud Opera House.
While the registration deadline has passed to attend in person, some tickets are still available for individual events and you can register for the online version of the conference through June 2nd!
LEARN MORE & VIEW THE EVENT FLYER
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William Norris Buffett Gifts Millions for Creation of Hotel Garber
Literature enthusiasts, history buffs, hunters, folks visiting family and everyone in between will soon have access to enhanced amenities when they visit Red Cloud. Guests can look forward to overnight stays at a charming boutique hotel, thanks in large part to the support of William Norris Buffet.
While he was born and raised in Omaha, Buffett spent ample time in Red Cloud during his youth. In all, he spent twelve summers at his grandmother’s farm near neighboring Inavale. Some of his fondest memories of boyhood are the trips he made “to town” on Saturday evenings. A night out in the 1940s consisted of a meal at Sid’s Café, a movie at the local theater, a ten-cent bag of popcorn, and a butterscotch sundae at the Hawley Drug Store.
READ THE FULL STORY from the Willa Cather Foundation
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While not as well-known as My Antonia or O Pioneers! and not as critically lauded as The Professor's House or Death Comes for the Archbishop, Cather's 1922 novel One of Ours is the one that scored her the coveted Pulitzer Prize for Literature. It's also perhaps more notable in Webster County for its depiction of places in and around Bladen, particularly the George Cather home. We encourage you to spend the summer with protagonist Claude Wheeler and Cather's famous WWI novel. Click on the book image to order from the Willa Cather Bookstore in Red Cloud!
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Discovering Sgt. Emanuel Prettyman
Following his death on May 28, 1918, at the battle for Cantigny, France—one of the American infantry’s defining battles—details about the death of Lieutenant G.P. Cather (the inspiration for Claude Wheeler in Willa Cather's One of Ours) were relayed to his grieving wife, Myrtle Bartlett Cather, and his parents, George and Frances Smith Cather. The sequence of events that led to his death were collected from soldiers who witnessed the event, one of whom was Sergeant Emanuel H. Prettyman. Prettyman maintained a correspondence with Frances Cather, describing G.P.’s courage and reassuring her that his death had been painless and instantaneous. Later, Prettyman would share his own lingering medical struggles resulting from war injuries.
LEARN MORE FROM THE NATIONAL WILLA CATHER CENTER ARCHIVES
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Friday Live to Broadcast from RC Opera House!
Nebraska Public Media's "Friday LIVE" arts and entertainment radio show is going on the road for a special live radio program taping featuring piano professor Jonathan Sokasits of Hastings College, a music performance inspired by the words of Willa Cather with Nebraska Chamber Players' Chris Ellenwood and more on Thursday, June 2 in Red Cloud.
The public is invited to be a part of this free event starting at 10am CT at the National Willa Cather Center’s Red Cloud Opera House, 413 N. Webster St.
“Friday LIVE” host Genevieve Randall will also give audience members the latest news about music, arts, literature and events happening around the state, including the 67th Annual Willa Cather Spring Conference June 2-4 in Red Cloud.
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Artist Cassia Kite's distinctive Soundstitching process allows visitors to experience Willa Cather's world in a whole new way. Soundstitching: Sites and Sounds of Willa Cather's World transforms the colors from hand-stitched images of locations from Cather's life into playable musical compositions, creating a multidisciplinary and multisensory experience.
A special Spring Conference event —an artist talk and a performance of Soundstitching compositions by Dr. Stacey Barelos on Friday, June 3—will be held in the Red Cloud Opera House as part of the 67th Spring Cather Conference! Watch the video below to learn more about Soundstitching.
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Littleton Alston
Creighton University; Sculptor of Willa Cather Statue
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