June 4 symposium on Willa Cather capped by celebration

Since the donation of the Roscoe and Meta Cather Collections to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Archives and Special Collections a year ago, a number of Cather scholars have examined the nearly 400 pieces of correspondence written by Willa Cather to her brother and his family.

The information uncovered in the donation about Willa Cather's relationships with friends and family through her correspondence will be the theme of a day-long symposium June 4, "Cather's Circles: Correspondence and Connections." A reception and lecture at the end of the day will celebrate the donation of the significant collection.

Both events are open to the public (with advance registration) and sponsored by UNL Libraries, Friends of the Libraries of UNL, the Willa Cather Project and the UNL Department of English. The symposium will start at 8:45 a.m. in the Nebraska Union, 1400 R St., and features keynote addresses by Cather biographers and scholars Janis P. Stout and Sharon O'Brien.

Stout is professor of English emerita at Texas A&M University and the author of many books on Cather, including "Willa Cather: The Writer and Her World." O'Brien is professor of English at Dickinson College and author of "Willa Cather: The Emerging Voice" and editor of the new Norton Critical Edition of Cather's "O Pioneers!"

The reception and lectures start at 5 p.m. in the Love Library auditorium, 13th and R streets. The program of the evening event will include members of the Roscoe and Meta Cather family, and Andrew Jewell, editor of the Willa Cather Archive (http://cather.unl.edu). Materials from the donated collection will also be on display in the Reading Room of the University Archives and Special Collections.

The Roscoe and Meta Cather Collection, named for Willa Cather's brother and sister-in-law and donated on behalf of their grandchildren to the University of Nebraska Foundation, contains some 358 letters, 38 postcards, 35 photographs and 77 books.

Willa Cather (1873-1947) graduated from the University of Nebraska in 1895 and went on to write a number of essays, short stories and novels that drew upon her life in Nebraska, Virginia and her travels. She won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for her novel about World War I, "One of Ours." Some of her other novels are "O Pioneers!" "My Antonia," and "Death Comes for the Archbishop."

The registration fee for the symposium is $15 per person. To register visit: iris.unl.edu. To attend the celebration, contact the Friends of the Libraries of UNL's development office at (402) 472-6987.