Newsletter of the

Society

Successful Projects Underway at the Katherine Anne Porter House

In early April, the restoration of the childhood home of KAP in Kyle, Texas, was expected to be complete within one or two weeks. While many citizens as well as the Austin Community Foundation, the Lower Colorado River Authority, the Clayton Fund, and others have contributed to the purchase of the house, Bill Johnson's Burdine Johnson Foundation made the extensive and historically accurate restoration, and the lovely landscaping that is to be added over the next month, possible. Mr. Johnson, a local rancher and philanthropist, has done much for the community and was the first recipient of the Preservationist of the Year Award by a local Texas preservation group, Preservation Associates. The foundation's gifts for the project have totaled approximately $300,000 overall.

The house is being leased for 99 years to Southwest Texas State University for $1 a year; Preservation Associates will continue to own it. This is an important cooperative project between the university and the local community. Once complete, those involved will seek to get the house listed in the National Register of Historic Places, which may in help in realizing KAP longing "to be read, and remembered" (Collected Stories, p. vi).

Kurt Englehorn, nephew of KAP=s childhood friend Erna Schlemmer, donated $600,000 to fund the writer-in-residence program. Funding for these operations will commence on June 1. A graduate of the SWTSU MFA program, Melissa Falcon, will live at the house during the first year in order to open the home to sightseers and members of the community. The students in Professor Cynthia Brandimarte=s SWTSU graduate program in Public History are formulating an interpretative program for the house. In addition, SWTSU Deans Ann Marie Ellis and Mike Willoughby have just extended additional funding for the KAP house to be used as a center for teaching K 12 students creative writing over the summer.

Visits to the house will begin in September, by which time furnishings should be in place. In addition, Barnes & Noble has contributed over 400 hardcovers books to date for the KAP library and will produce at KAP broadside in a limited edition of 150. These will be for sale to collectors by Fall 2000.

Finally, the first year of visiting writers will be quite impressive. Pulitzer Prize winner Annie Proulx will speak at the house in late September (27 29), and also tentatively scheduled are visits by Pulitzer Prize winner Philip Levine, National Book Award winner Tim O'Brien, MacArthur Genius Award winner Leslie Marmon Silko, as well as a host of other writers including Don Snyder, James Daniels, Tessa Rumsey, and KAP biographers Joan Givner and Janis Stout, both of whom are expected to appear at the house sometime in October 2000.