Mississippi-born author whose Southern-themed novel, The Optimist's Daughter, received the 1973 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. She is also known for A Worn Path (1940), The Wide Net (1943), and other short stories and short story collections.
She studied English literature at the University of Wisconsin and later graduated from Columbia University with a degree in advertising. After publishing her short story collection, A Curtain of Green, she secured employment with The New York Times Review of Books.
Her literary work highlights the complexities of human relationships and the psychological significance of place.
She and her two younger brothers were raised in Jackson, Mississippi. Her schoolteacher mother, Mary Andrews Welty, encouraged her love of reading and writing.
She and Playwright Tennessee Williams are both important 20th-century Southern authors.
