The Shoe Bird is a 1964 children's novel by Southern writer Eudora Welty. The novel tells the story of a parrot in a shoe store, as he talks to other birds about shoes. [1] Welty, who had never written any children's literature before, wrote it to satisfy a contractual obligation with her publisher Harcourt Brace and to pay for a new roof on her house. [2]
An orchestral ballet was composed by Lehman Engel and performed by the Jackson Ballet Guild in 1968. [2] A 2002 choral piece was also commissioned by the Mississippi Boy Choir and composed by composer Samuel Jones. [3]
Reception of the novel was mixed, with critic Nancy Hardgrove calling most reviews in major publications "cordial but restrained". [4] However, reception amongst children's literature commentators was largely negative. [2] Kirkus Reviews described the novel as uneventful: "Practically no action occurs during the lengthy discussion, which consists almost entirely of a stream of witticisms, many of which are irrelevant." [1] The review concludes wryly "the overly wordy result is so obscure that readers are likely to want to leave dictionaries as well as shoes to the birds." [1]
Eudora Alice Welty was an American short story writer, novelist and photographer who wrote about the American South. Her novel The Optimist's Daughter won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973. Welty received numerous awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Order of the South. She was the first living author to have her works published by the Library of America. Her house in Jackson, Mississippi has been designated as a National Historic Landmark and is open to the public as a house museum.
Charlotte's Web is a book of children's literature by American author E. B. White and illustrated by Garth Williams. It was published on October 15, 1952, by Harper & Brothers. The novel tells the story of a livestock pig named Wilbur and his friendship with a barn spider named Charlotte. When Wilbur is in danger of being slaughtered by the farmer, Charlotte writes messages in her web praising Wilbur, such as "Some Pig", "Terrific", "Radiant", and "Humble", to persuade the farmer to let him live.
Anne Tyler is an American novelist, short story writer, and literary critic. She has published twenty-four novels, including Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant (1982), The Accidental Tourist (1985), and Breathing Lessons (1988). All three were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and Breathing Lessons won the prize in 1989. She has also won the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize, the Ambassador Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 2012 she was awarded The Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence. Tyler's twentieth novel, A Spool of Blue Thread, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2015, and Redhead By the Side of the Road was longlisted for the same award in 2020.
Edwin DuBose Heyward was an American author best known for his 1925 novel Porgy. He and his wife Dorothy, a playwright, adapted it as a 1927 play of the same name. The couple worked with composer George Gershwin to adapt the work as the 1935 opera Porgy and Bess. It was later adapted as a 1959 film of the same name.
Intruder in the Dust is a 1948 crime novel written by American author William Faulkner. Taking place in Mississippi, it revolves around an African-American farmer accused of murdering a Caucasian man.
William Keepers Maxwell Jr. was an American editor, novelist, short story writer, essayist, children's author, and memoirist. He served as a fiction editor at The New Yorker from 1936 to 1975. An editor devoted to his writers, Maxwell became a mentor and confidant to many authors.
The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty is a collection of short stories by American penner Eudora Welty, first published by Houghton Mifflin in 1980. Its first paperback edition won the 1983 National Book Award for Paperback Fiction.
Samuel Jones is an American composer and conductor.
"A Worn Path" by Eudora Welty is a short story about an elderly African American woman who undertakes a familiar journey on a road in a rural area to acquire medicine for her grandson. She expresses herself, both to her surroundings and in short spurts of spoken monologue, warning away animals and expressing the pain she feels in her weary bones.
The Eudora Welty House & Garden, at 1119 Pinehurst Street in Jackson, Mississippi, was the home of author Eudora Welty for nearly 80 years. It was built by her parents in 1925. Welty and her mother built and tended to the garden located at the side and back of the home over decades. Welty could often be found writing in her bedroom or on the porch, which frequently hosted her peers in writing. The house was first declared a Mississippi Landmark in 2001, added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2002, and declared a National Historic Landmark in 2004.
Ann Wood Waldron was an American author who initially focused on writing for children and young adults, then turned to biographies of authors from the South, and ultimately shifted in her late seventies to writing murder mysteries set at Princeton University.
The Ponder Heart is a novella written by Eudora Welty and illustrated by Joe Krush, originally published in The New Yorker in 1953, and republished by Harcourt Brace in 1954. The plot of The Ponder Heart follows Daniel Ponder, a wealthy heir, and is told through the narration of Edna Earle Ponder, Daniel's niece. In 1956, the story was made into a Broadway play by Joseph Fields and Jerome Chodorov. Una Merkel won the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play for her portrayal of Edna Earle Ponder in the Broadway play.
Joe Krush and Beth Krush were an American husband-and-wife team of illustrators who worked primarily on children's books. They may be known best for the U.S. editions of all five Borrowers books by Mary Norton, published by Harcourt 1953–1961 and 1982, a series inaugurated very early in their careers.
A novelist is an author or writer of novels, though often novelists also write in other genres of both fiction and non-fiction. Some novelists are professional novelists, thus make a living writing novels and other fiction, while others aspire to support themselves in this way or write as an avocation. Most novelists struggle to have their debut novel published, but once published they often continue to be published, although very few become literary celebrities, thus gaining prestige or a considerable income from their work.
Delta Wedding is a 1946 Southern fiction novel by Eudora Welty. Set in 1923, the novel tells of the experiences of the Fairchild family in a domestic drama-filled week leading up to Dabney Fairchild's wedding to the family overseer, Troy Flavin, during an otherwise unexceptional year in the Mississippi Delta.
Losing Battles is the last novel written by Eudora Welty. It was released on April 13, 1970. Its setting is two days—a Sunday and Monday morning—in a 1930s farm in Mississippi. It was her first novel to make the best seller lists, to Welty's surprise.
The Golden Apples is a short story collection with seven stories written by Eudora Welty, first published in 1949. The stories form an interrelated cycle, which explores the economic and social plight of the fictional Morgana Mississippi: “Shower of Gold”; “June Recital”; “Sir Rabbit”; “Moon Lake”; “The Whole World Knows”; “Music from Spain” and “The Wanderers.”
The literature of Mississippi, United States, includes fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. Mississippi has a literary tradition that arose from a diverse mix of cultures and races. Traditional themes from this genre of literature lean towards the past, conflict and change, and southern history in general; however, in the modern era, work have shifted towards deeply Southern works that do not rely on these traditional themes.
Six of One is a 1978 novel by Rita Mae Brown. It is the first in her Runnymede series of books about a small town on the Mason-Dixon line and its sometimes eccentric residents. It is also the first of the Hunsenmeir trilogy, a subset of the Runnymede series, which focuses on the elderly Hunsenmeir sisters. According to Brown, the sisters are based on her own mother and aunt, who "do tend to dominate in a way", and the town is based on her own birthplace, about which she says: "It’s really interesting to have one foot in the North and one foot in the South."
Mary Bettina Linn was an American writer and college professor. She wrote three published novels, and was on the faculty at Bryn Mawr College. She worked with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during World War II.