Willa Cather

Willa Sibert Cather is an important women in American litature. She played an important part in the development of of modernist writing in America. Although her writing is consistantly concise and to the point it is also very vivid with its language and the pictures it paints. Not only was she a writer but she was a teacher, journalish and critic too.

Willa was born in Back Creek, Virginia in 1873. Her family moved to to Red Cloud, Nebraska when she was ten years old. Red Cloud was a small town surounded by the tumultuous prairie. The settlers who lived in the town were mainly Scandinavian, Bohemian, and French immigrants trying to make a living off the difficult land. "Americans" seemed to be a minority. Most people who lived in this area where fresh off the boat. This environment greatly influenced Cather’s life. She used her experiences growing up in that area and used them to create vivid descriptions of her characters and settings in her writing. It made her concentrate ...