'The ultimate job' for good writers

 

“Good writers don’t moralize, nor do they preach, but they do create longing for the true and the beautiful.” – Eudora Welty

 

Born in Jackson, Miss., on this date in 1909, Welty spent most of her life in and wrote about the American South, sharing a love of the region and its unique communities and bringing its stories to life for the world to see.  

 

Primarily a writer of short stories and honored in 1992 for her lifetime contributions to the genre, she also penned one of the all-time best American novels – the 1973 Pulitzer Prize winner, The Optimist’s Daughter.  And, she did a series of lectures released in the 1980s as a New York Times bestselling nonfiction book, One Writer's Beginnings, runner-up for the National Book Award.

 

“Place” was always vitally important to Welty.   “It is,” she said, “what makes fiction seem real, because with it come customs, feelings, and associations.   Place answers the questions: ‘What happened? Who's here? Who's coming?’”   And that, she said, is the job of the storyteller.  

 

“Long before I wrote stories, I ‘listened’ for stories,” she said.  “Listening for them is something more acute than listening to them.”