Eudora Welty Society Minutes [draft]
May 23 2014, American Literature Association, Washington DC

Attendees:
Sarah Ford, Harriet Pollack, Julia Eichelberger, Jacob Agner, Donnie McMahand, Kevin Murphy, Susan Donaldson, Adrienne Akins Warfield, Allison Castle Combs, Christin Taylor, Cliff Hudder

EWS President Sarah Ford called the meeting to order. The minutes for our 2013 meeting were distributed and approved.

Awards: Pearl McHaney has been selected for the 2014 Phoenix Award.
The Ruth Vande Kieft Award this year goes to Donnie McMahand and Kevin Murphy.
The Grad Student Travel Award has not yet been assigned this year.

Publications:

The 2014 Eudora Welty Review, drawn from papers given at the 2013 Welty conference in Texas and guest edited by David McWhirter and Sarah Ford, should be out this summer.

Mae Miller Claxton and Julia Eichelberger are co-editors of a proposed volume, MLA Approaches to Teaching the Works of Eudora Welty. They are inviting proposals and asking that everyone fill out the survey that is on the MLA website.

Panels:
SCMLA will have a panel in 2014 on “Reading Environment in Welty.”
SAMLA will have a panel in 2014, chaired by Jacob Agner, on “Welty and Multimedia.”

Other Welty Events:
David Kaplan is curating an arts festival, “The Welty Biennial,” to be held in Jackson April 10-July 3, 2015.
Someone in D. C. who is creating a new museum, the American Women Writers Museum, has asked Sarah if the EWS would be interested in putting on a panel at its space. Some people who live in the surrounding area said they thought this would be a good idea. I think Sarah will be following up if she has a more specific request/time slot from the museum.

Treasurer’s report: Michael Kreyling reports that the EWS had [verify this] $4587 in its account. This topic led to a discussion of dues: should we charge more? Should we create an auto-reminder system or require the dues to be paid at specific times? In keeping with EWS tradition, no solution emerged from this discussion.

Finally, we discussed what panels we should hold at ALA 2015, which will be in Boston. It was suggested we try another panel jointly with another author’s society, such as the Welty-Faulkner panel this year co-organized with the Faulkner society. It was noted that the attempt to do a Welty-Morrison panel had not succeeded in the past but perhaps we should try again; another Faulkner/Welty panel might also be fruitful. MELUS and the Katherine Anne Porter Society were mentioned as possible co-organizers. Topics offered were a roundtable on Approaches to Teaching Welty (perhaps following up on the MLA Approaches book), Welty and Class, Welty and War, and Welty and Film (this might be appropriate after the EW festival where Kaplan may screen some films that Welty admired). No one objected to any topics, nor was there any clear winner among them. Anyone with ideas should send them to the listserv.

With its business done, the EWS reconvened later that evening for a jolly meal across the street from the hotel, where the staff pleased us all by issuing separate checks.