Willa Cather, American Voice, with Peter Cipkowski

On Wednesday, February 25th, at 6:30pm, Peter Cipkowski, literary historian at UCLA and President of the Board of Governors of the National Willa Cather Center, visits the Coffee House to speak about legendary author, Willa Cather.

About the Event:

Willa Cather wrote many of her greatest works while living at 5 Bank Street between 1912 and 1927. One of the most distinctive and enduring voices in twentieth-century American literature, she was unimpressed by the antics of her fellow artists in Greenwich Village and instead pursued her own path with determination, discipline, and deep reflection on the past. The result was a series of groundbreaking novels—including O Pioneers!, My Ántonia, One of Ours, The Professor’s House, and Death Comes for the Archbishop—that helped define the American literary canon and speak with special urgency today.

Literary historian Peter Cipkowski will offer an overview of Cather’s life and times, drawing on excerpts from her writings to trace her lifelong struggle to shape a distinctly American voice.

Abut the Speaker:

As President of the Board of Governors of the National Willa Cather Center, Peter Cipkowski has organized and led programs nationwide marking the sesquicentennial of Willa Cather’s birth, including lectures and public readings at Symphony Space (with Ken Burns), the New York Society Library, the Boston Athenaeum, the Newberry Library in Chicago, and the Los Angeles Central Library.

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