Video: Editor Andrew Jewell Reads Willa Cather’s Letters

Photo: Josh Barnes.

On April 30th City of Asylum/Pittsburgh hosted a reading of the letters of Willa Cather by Andrew Jewell, co-editor of The Selected Letters of Willa Cather.

The author of works like My Ántonia and O Pioneers!, Cather forbade the publication of her personal papers, including her letters, after her death in 1947. However, in 2011 Cather’s letters became legally available for publication following the death of her second literary executor. Editors Andrew Jewell and Janis Stout reviewed Cather’s letters and divided them into categories like “The Pittsburgh Years,” “Finding Herself as a Writer,” and “The Culmination of a Career.”

In the video below Jewell reads from some of Cather’s letters while she was living in Pittsburgh in the late 1800s, both on her impressions of the city and on her writing during that time.