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First Lady Dedicates Porter Home as Literary Landmark

On June 13, 2002, First Lady Laura Bush, honorary chairwoman of the Friends of the Library U.S.A. (FOLUSA), helped dedicate Katherine Anne Porter's childhood home in Kyle, Texas, as a National Literary Landmark as designated by the FOLUSA and the Library of Congress. The residence at 508 Center Street is owned by the Hays County Preservation Associates and leased to Southwest Texas State University, which operates the building as a museum dedicated to the author, as well as a writing center and home for writers-in-residence at the university. The Literary Landmarks Association was founded in 1986 by former FOLUSA president Frederick G. Ruffner to the dedication of historic literary sites. Dedications have included homes of famous writers, libraries and museum collections, and literary scenes and objects. The only other National Literary Landmark in Texas is the O. Henry home in Austin.

Mrs. Bush is well known as an advocate of literary causes. She participated in the ceremony along with Southwest Texas State University President Jerome Supple, Gail Bialas of the Texas Center for the Book, National Book Award winner Tim O'Brien, and Meredith Baker O'Brien, who read from Porter's work. Laura Bush and Bill Johnson, member of the board of the Katherine Anne Porter Literary Center, unveiled the landmark plaque. Mr. Johnson and his wife made the restoration of the house and establishment of the center possible through a grant from the Burdine Johnson Foundation. Other participants and guests as the dedication included Ramiro Salazar, City of Dallas Director of Libraries; James L. Adkins, Mayor of Kyle; Liz Carpenter, former press secretary to First Lady Ladybird Johnson; and Paul Porter, nephew of Katherine Anne Porter.

"This is a special day for fans of the great American author Katherine Anne Porter," said Mrs. Bush. "With this landmark designation, we honor the legacy of a native Texan who enhanced the landscape of American literature and inspired readers and writers alike." She added, "Katherine Anne Porter captured the essence of Texas and our imaginations in brilliant writings. . . . In reading her stories, we come to appreciate the Texas of her youth, and in writing them, the author must have come to terms with it. . . . This house now stands as a living memorial to one of our most beloved, and best, storytellers."

SWT President Supple thanked Mrs. Bush for her participation in the dedication and said that her presence reinforced Porter's important place in American literature. "Southwest Texas State University is pleased to have had a part in saving this landmark from destruction," said Supple. "This house helped to shape a little girl with dreams into one of this nation's greatest prose writers and possibly its greatest short story writer. It is fitting that we honor her in this way and inspire future writers through their contact with a part of her."

The small frame home has been the subject of significant restoration and landscaping projects in recent years. Tom Grimes, director of SWT's Master of Fine Arts Program in Creative Writing, was one of many individuals involved in the home's preservation. "Katherine Anne Porter lived in the home for ten years during her childhood, and it influenced her early work enormously," said Grimes. "The Katherine Anne Porter house really influenced her fiction, her strongest fiction, 'Old Mortality,' 'The Old Order,' . . . the landmark status recognizes the impact of place on American literature."

In addition to its use as a museum and a home for writers-in-residence, the university also uses the house for tours, programs for school children, and readings and talks by visiting writers. Beginning in summer 2002, the literary center began hosting a new creative writing program for children, also sponsored by the Burdine Johnson Foundation. Graduate students in Creative Writing from SWT's Master of Fine Arts Program instruct the Creative Writing classes for high school-level students. Instructors, who bring unique perspectives to their classrooms and relate well to the students, foster the students' enjoyment of creative writing and literature as well as encouraging them to see school as a positive experience. Instruction is designed to meet the needs of individual students and to take into account each student's rate of learning, learning style, and level of achievement. Students are encouraged to explore a wide variety of topics in fiction and poetry, using good judgment and methodology. The results of the first year of the program included visual presentations at the KAP Young Writers Showcase and student readings of their work. More information about the KAP Young Writers Program can be found on its Web site, http://www.English.swt.edu/youngwriters. The Web site also includes contact information, the names of teachers and students, and student work.

Matt Oates began serving as the Writer-in-Residence at the Katherine Anne Porter Literary Center in 2002. Funded by a grant from Curt Englehorn's "Angel" Foundation, the Writer-in-Residence lives in the Porter House and acts as curator of the museum. Events held at the seminar house of the Katherine Anne Porter Literary Center during the 2002-2003 academic year included readings and book signings by Junot Diaz, Shelby Hearon, Jane Hirshfield, Ai, Barry Hannah, and Harry Matthews. Junot Diaz is the nationally acclaimed story collection Drown. Several stories from the collectiona appeared in the New Yorker and Best American Stories of the Year. Shelby Hearon, the author of thirteen novels, including Ella in Bloom and Hug Dancing, was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Texas Institute of Letters and, in November 2003, will receive the Bookend Award from the Texas Book Festival. Jane Hirshfield is the author of five collections of poetry: Given Sugar, Given Salt (finalist for the 2001 National Book Critics Circle Award and winner of the Bay Area Book Reviewers Award), The Lives of the Heart, The October Palace, Of Gravity & Angels, and Alaya, as well as a book of essays on poetry, Nine Gates. Her work has appeared in the New Yorker, the Atlantic, the Nation, the American Poetry Review, and Best American Poems. National Book Award winning poet, Ai held the Roy F. and Joann Cole Mitte Endowed Chair of Creative Writing at SWT in 2002-2003. Author of eight volumes of poetry, Cruelty, Killing Floor, Sin, Fate, Greed, Vice: New & Selected Poems, and Dread, Ai's work has appeared in Harvard Advocate, Witness, the Paris Review, Iowa Review, Quarterly West, New Letters, American Poetry Review, Antaeus, Ironwood, and ONTHEBUS. Barry Hannah's fiction includes Geronimo Rex, Nightwatchmen, Never Die, Bats Out of Hell, Ray, High Lonesome and Yonder Stands Your Orphan. Hannah's honors include the Bellaman Foundation Award in Fiction, the William Faulkner Prize, the Arnold Gingrich Short Fiction Award, the Award for Literature from the American Institute of Arts and Letters, and a nomination for the National Book Award. Harry Mathews is the author of five novels: Cigarettes, The Conversions, Tlooth, The Journalist, and Singular Pleasures. He has also authored several collections of poetry, including Armenian Papers: Poems 1954-1984, Out of Bounds, and A Mid-Season Sky: Poems 1954-1991. In addition, Matthews has written several nonfiction books, including The Way Home, Selected Declarations of Dependence, The Orchard: A Remembrance of Georges Perec and 20 Lines a Day.

For information about the MFA program, the literary series, or the Young Writers Program, please contact Matt Oates, Katherine Anne Porter Literary Center Coordinator at (512) 268?6637, or visit the Lindsey Literary Series Web site at http://www.English.swt.edu/TKL.