“My father knew our way mile by mile; by day or by night, he knew where we were. Everything that changed under our eyes, in the flying countryside, was the known world to him, the imagination to me. Each in our own way, we hungered for all this: my father and I were in no other respect or situation so congenial.”

American short-story writer, novelist, and photographer

Eudora Welty was an American short-story writer, novelist, and photographer who wrote about the American South. She is known for fiction that captures the region’s people, speech, and social life, and for a body of work that earned lasting recognition during her lifetime. Her novel The Optimist’s Daughter won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973. Welty also received major honors 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, and her house in Jackson, Mississippi, is a National Historic Landmark open to the public as a house museum.