Willa Cather was one of the great American novelists of the twentieth century. Cather led a varied career as a muckraking journalist, a harsh theater critic, and a magazine executive before fully settling into their* literary career as an influential voice of frontier and pioneer life.
[*Willa Cather is often referred to with she/her pronouns. However, Cather lived as a man for years, going by “William” or “Bill” and dressing in gentleman’s clothes. Many scholars have recognized Cather to be transgender, but some claim they were transgender only for a period in their life since in adulthood photographs suggest Cather stopped appearing as masculine as they did in their teenage years. The true answers are unknown, as Cather had their partner burn all of their correspondence and journals to protect their privacy in all matters, including gender, after their death.
Since Cather lived in the 1800s, our modern understanding of gender identity is very different from the world Cather lived in. In an attempt to be as respectful to the author as possible, acknowledging both their masculine identity and the historical reference to them as a woman, we are opting to refer to Cather using they/them pronouns.]
Cather was born in 1873 in Virginia, where they lived until age nine when their family moved to Nebraska. In Nebraska Cather became fascinated by the stories of immigrants they met and their tales later served as inspiration in Cather’s novels. Cather’s work is noted especially for its breathtaking descriptions of landscapes and its grounded sense of place. Cather’s approval towards rural community values and disdain towards consumerism is evident in their novels. Interested in salt-of-the-earth characters who lived off of their labor, Cather’s works were unique in their divergence from the typical contemporary literary focus on gentility. Their first best seller, One of Ours, won a Pulitzer Prize in 1923.
Cather lived their last forty years of life with their life partner, Edith Lewis. Cather died in New York City in 1947.