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This program is devoted to the American master Eudora Welty, who lived in Jackson, Miss., from 1909 until her death in 2001, and whose dozens of stories and a handful of novels reflect the American South’s gentility, eccentricity, and mystery. She won the Pulitzer Prize in 1972 for her novel The Optimist’s Daughter, and was awarded the Rea Award for the Short Story, honoring a lifetime’s achievement, in 1992. The first Welty story, “Lily Daw and the Three Ladies,” gently skewers the sort of busy body do-gooders who reside in every small town, in this case, three matrons whose efforts to arrange for the future of a somewhat backward orphan girl take an unexpected turn when the object of their efforts turns out to have ideas of her own! The reader is the multiple-award-winning actress Marian Seldes.

This program’s second Eudora Welty story, “The Key,” is read by Sloane Shelton, creator of a one-woman show about Welty. Like the first story, it involves a train ride, and like “Lily Daw” it deals with the possibilities, small though they may be, of eventual marital happiness. But here there is no wry, comic tone—instead, we see from multiple perspectives the hard reality of a strained couple making their way towards Niagara Falls, the secret recesses of their minds and marriage, and secrets they keep even from themselves.

“Lily Daw and the Three Ladies” by Eudora Welty, read by Marian Seldes
“The Key” by Eudora Welty, read by Sloane Shelton

For additional works featured on SELECTED SHORTS, please visit Symphony Space