Willa Sibert Cather was an American author who achieved recognition for her novels of frontier life on the Great Plains, in works such as O Pioneers!, My Ántonia, and The Song of the Lark. In 1923 she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for One of Ours , a novel set during World War I. Cather grew up in Nebraska and graduated from the University of Nebraska. She lived and worked in Pittsburgh for ten years, then at the age of 33 she moved to New York, where she lived for the rest of her life. She was born Wilella Sibert Cather in 1873 on her maternal grandmother's farm in the Back Creek... Valley near Winchester, Virginia . Her father was Charles Fectigue Cather , whose family had lived on land in the valley for six generations. Her mother was Mary Virginia Boak , a former school teacher. Within a year of Cather's birth, the family moved to Willow Shade, a Greek Revival-style home on 130 acres given to them by her paternal grandparents. The Cathers moved to Nebraska in 1883, joining Charles' parents, when Willa was nine years old.
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