Willa Cather Sculpture in Winchester, Virginia

In December 1873, Willa Sibert Cather was born on her grandmother’s farm in the Back Creek Valley in the Shenandoah Valley area near Winchester, Virginia.

When Willa was nine, the family moved to a farm in rural Nebraska and a few months later to the town of Red Cloud. It was the first time Willa and her siblings attended school. During her free time, she frequently visited the Red Cloud’s library and helped the local doctor with house calls.

After graduating high school, Willa went to the University of Nebraska–Lincoln to study science to become a physician; after writing for the Nebraska State Journal and the Lincoln Courier and editing the university’s student newspaper, she changed her major and graduated with a BA in English in 1895. Willa moved to Pittsburgh, worked as a teacher, and wrote and published for several magazines.

Her first poetry book was published in 1903, followed by her first collection of short stories two years later. After moving to New York City, NY, Willa started writing more intensively about life in the Great Plains of Nebraska, publishing O Pioneers! (1913), The Song of the Lark (1915), and My Ántonia (1918), which made her a worldwide success and gave a glimpse into Nebraskan life.

In her lifetime, Willa wrote 12 novels, two poetry books, seven short story collections (three were published post-mortem), and thousands of letters archived at the Willa Cather Archive at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln.

On October 12th, 2023, a few months after Nebraska dedicated Willa’s statue at the National Statuary Hall Collection at the US Capitol, the Winchester’s Museum of the Shenandoah Valley (MSV) unveiled a copy of it in The Trails at the MSV. Littleton Alston sculpted it; like Willa, he is a Native of Virginia who moved to Nebraska. In the spring, Virginian flowers and Nebraska’s state flowers will surround the statue.