A “Case” for Spotlight Author Willa Cather
In an essay on the Great War’s impact on Virginia Woolf and Willa Cather, Josephine O’Brien Schaefer mentions that, for Cather, “stories have to be told, songs to be sung, poems to be written before a country’s spirit can be kindled.” The fact that Cather lived in so many places across the US—from Virginia to Nebraska, from Pittsburgh to New York City, and from Santa Fe back to Nebraska—secures her position as a writer of place. The 2025 Sigma Tau Delta Convention marks a return to Pittsburgh as its host city. Not surprisingly, conversations about our Spotlight Author kept circling back to Willa Cather, not only because of her time as a resident but also because so many different regions in our Society might “claim” her.
Cather’s work also inspired our selection of the convention theme One of Ours. In her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by the same name, Claude Wheeler wrestles with his identity in the place where he was born and raised. When Claude finds himself a soldier in France, the experience of encountering a different culture affects his sense of self and place. These notions of Cather and “place” suggest possibilities for how she and her work might be celebrated in various chapter activities.
Cather spent ten years living in Pittsburgh, specifically in the Oakland area, very close to the University of Pittsburgh. She worked as a high school teacher and as a journalist for Pittsburgh newspapers. Since “stories have to be told,” Cather honed her craft as a fiction writer in Pittsburgh, too, composing the classic story “Paul’s Case” while living here. Paul works as an usher at the Carnegie Music Hall, located directly across from Pitt Cathedral of Learning and still used today to host famous writers and musical performances. For people in Pennsylvania, then, the author Willa Cather and her character Paul are one of ours; we feel a kinship, knowing that she lived in the spaces we continue to occupy, both physical and literary. This tendency to claim identity through people we admire—real or fictional—might make more sense to those of us who tell stories, sing songs, or write poetry. The artists we love or admire inspire our desire to “own” their works.