A Brief History of the Eudora Welty Newsletter and the Eudora Welty Review

The Eudora Welty Newsletter began in 1977 as “a relatively informal medium of communication among Welty scholars and collectors” by W.U. McDonald, Jr., University of Toledo. EWN was registered with an ISSN and mimeographed biannually to publish bibliographic notes, textual collations, and checklists of scholarship, new works by Eudora Welty, and newspaper clippings.

Twenty years later in 1997, the Eudora Welty Newsletter moved from the University of Toledo and McDonald’s editorship to Georgia State University under the editorship of Pearl McHaney, and EWN joined the Council of Editors of Learned Journals. EWN changed formats from typed, mimeographed, stapled 8 x11 pages to being a professionally printed little magazine/newsletter, began publishing researched essays, and two years later introduced color to the front and back pages.

After thirty-two years and sixty-five issues in all, in 2009, the centennial of the author’s birth, the Eudora Welty Newsletter morphed into the Eudora Welty Review, an annual peer-reviewed journal averaging 200 pages and published at Georgia State University for volumes 1-13, 2009-2021.

The Eudora Welty Review publishes essays of scholarship and criticism, book reviews, the annual Ruth Vande Kieft Award essay by a junior scholar, the annual Mississippi Department of Archives and History Eudora Welty Fellowship essay or report, notes of critical, bibliographic, and textual analysis, news from the Eudora Welty Foundation, the Eudora Welty House & Garden, the Eudora Welty Society, the Welty Collection at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, and an annual checklist of scholarship.

From 1997-2008, EWN published the research of 20 of GSU graduate students in more than 55 articles; many of these students also served as associate editors. From 2009-2021, EWR published the work of 14 other graduate students in essays, reviews, and notes. 23 additional graduate students assisted Lori Howard, production and managing editor, and 18 undergraduates worked with Lori as Interns. (Additionally, 6 GSU PhD alums and 3 of our faculty have published in the Newsletter or Review.)  The EWN and EWR graduate students are now chairs of departments, deans of colleges, entrepreneurs, tenured professors and lecturers, authors of monographs.

The Eudora Welty Review may be subscribed to in print and digital form and is digitally available through Project Muse, EBSCO Host, ProQuest, and JSTOR. EWN texts are available through JSTOR: https://www.jstor.org/journal/eudoweltnews. EWR is indexed in Humanities International Index and MLA International Bibliography. 

In Spring of 2022, the Eudora Welty Review is moving its publishing home to the University of Pennsylvania Press and its web and financial home to Baylor University.  Rebecca Harrison of the University of West Georgia (GSU PhD alumna) and Sarah Ford of Baylor University are now co-editors with Mae Miller Claxton and Michael Pickard as associate editors.

As its overall mission, the Eudora Welty Review continues to support and investigate of the works and life of Eudora Welty in historical and contemporary contexts for scholars and readers alike.

Pearl McHaney

Kenneth M. England Professor of Southern Literature, Emerita

Eudora Welty Review, Founding Editor

April 9, 2022 [updated August 2023}