Willa Cather is one of the most important Midwestern authors, seen as a peer to writers like Hemingway, Faulkner and Wharton. But many readers remain unfamiliar with the Pulitzer Prize–winner, who published twelve novels and dozens of short stories in the 1900s.
That’s what the Willa Cather Center in Red Cloud, Nebraska, is working to change. They seek to turn a rural community of 938 into a literary destination celebrating Cather’s legacy.
In recent years, the Center has restored five historic sites connected to Cather’s life and writing and opened a boutique hotel. Visitors can walk through Cather’s childhood home, look at stained glass windows she commissioned in the local church, or visit the family farmstead that appears in one of her novels.
“All of those sites help people understand Cather’s life and contextualize her words,” says the Center’s executive director, Ashley Olson. “They can actually step into her childhood room, or sit on a bench in the train depot and think about what it would’ve been like when there were seven passenger trains a day coming through Red Cloud… It’s an act of literary pilgrimage.”
But for those who can’t visit Red Cloud in person, don’t despair. The Center works nationwide to connect people with Cather’s catalogue. Most recently, the Center took part in the 2024-25 NEA Big Read, leading a community reading program centered on one of her most famous books, My Ántonia.
My Ántonia follows Jim Burden, an orphan who moves to Nebraska, and his lifelong friendship with Ántonia Shimerda, a young immigrant girl. Its themes of friendship, resilience, and frontier life remain as powerful today as when Cather wrote it more than a century ago.
As part of their NEA Big Read programming, the Center distributed books to schools, created traveling exhibits, and organized lectures. The response was enthusiastic: they received 33 requests for programs across seven states, including 14 communities in Nebraska alone.
“I in fact do judge a book by its cover, and My Ántonia looked wordy and plain,” said one senior in Rhode Island whose school participated. “But I found myself going to sleep wondering what would happen next and why things happened as they did. There were many times where I would wish that Cather were alive today to answer all my annoying questions”
For Olson, the work is about honoring Cather, but also about investing in her town’s future.
Like a lot of kids who grow up in small rural communities, when I left for college, I thought there’s no way I could come back because of a lack of careeropportunities,” she says. “Now tourism and the arts are a meaningful part of the economy; we’ve added jobs, rehabilitated downtown buildings, and received designation from the Nebraska Arts Council as a certified Creative District.”
Their NEA Big Read programming wrapped up at the annual Willa Cather Conference, which drew nearly 150 participants for scholarship, art, and performance—including a preview of a brand-new musical adaptation of My Ántonia by Minneapolis’s Theater Latté Da.
“I think it’s really a testament to Cather’s power,” says Olson. “She isn’t as recognizable in popular culture as we’d like her to be yet, but her star is definitely shining bright.”
The Willa Cather Center’s programming related to sharing the author’s work and legacy was made possible in part by the National Endowment for the Arts Big Read program. The NEA Big Read provides grants ranging from $5,000 to $20,000 to help bring communities together around the shared activity of reading and discussing the same book.