Eudora Welty was born on April 13, 1909, in Jackson, Mississippi, to Christian Webb and Chestina Andrews Welty. Her father was an insurance company president. She attended Mississippi State College for Women for a year and graduated from the University of Wisconsin in 1929 with a major in English literature. She also attended the Columbia University Graduate School of Business where she studied advertising. After graduation, the Great Depression hampered her ability to find a job in her chosen field, so she worked as a part-time journalist and copywriter at newspapers and radio stations near her home in Mississippi. She also acquired a job as a Works Progress Administration (WPA) photographer, a job that took her on assignments throughout Mississippi. The experience of traveling throughout the South in order to observe people gave her the impetus to begin writing stories. Her first published story, "Death of a Traveling Salesman...