Video of Welty Lecture with Elizabeth Strout and Ann Patchett’s Introduction Now On Line at Folger Virtual
The Eudora Welty Lecture with Elizabeth Strout, introduced by Ann Patchett, is streaming on-demand on Folger Virtual through June 30, 2023, for a fee of $15.00. Visit here for more information. The National Press Club in Washington, D. C., was the happy scene on March 23 of the sixth Eudora Welty Lecture featuring Pulitzer Prize-winning author Strout. Patchett, the fifth Welty Lecturer, whose program was delivered on video due to the Covid pandemic, introduced her friend, Strout. The lecture is produced by the Eudora Welty Foundation in partnership with the Folger Shakespeare Library.
More than 400 guests were treated to a thoughtful and amusing recounting by Strout of her development as a writer from her youth through her early career. The Welty Lecture honors Eudora’s memoir, One Writer’s Beginnings, in which she reflects on the influences on her writing as she was growing up.
Karen Ann Daniels, Director of Programming and Artistic Director of the Folger Theatre, welcomed guests to the Lecture. Welty Foundation Board Chairman Holmes Adams also greeted the audience and introduced Ann Patchett. Patchett, 2021 Welty Lecturer and former member of the Welty Foundation National Advisory Board, introduced Elizabeth Strout.
Ann Patchett greets her friend Elizabeth Strout at the Lecture begins. Strout conveys a range of emotions as she delivers the Lecture, to the delight of the audience.
At left, Pat O’Connor, Hannah Goda, James O’Connor, and Margaret McMullan, member of the Welty Foundation National Advisory Board, arrive for the Lecture. Pat and Margaret are from Pass Christian, Mississippi, while Hannah and James live in Washington, D. C. In center, Welty Board Chairman Holmes Adams greets guests Ellen Daniels, director of the Mississippi Book Festival, and Holly Lange, inaugural Book Festival director and a member of the Welty Foundation Board. At right, Mary Alice Welty White, Eudora’s niece and secretary of the Welty Foundation Board of Directors, welcomed Kate Lehrer, whose late husband journalist Jim Lehrer was a member of the Welty Foundation National Advisory Board. The Lehrers were also close friends of Eudora’s.
