Born in 1873, Willa Cather was raised in Virginia and Nebraska. After graduating from the University of Nebraska she established herself as a theatre critic, journalist and teacher in Pittsburgh whilst also writing short stories and poems. She then moved to New York where she took a job as an investigative journalist before becoming a full-time writer. Cather enjoyed great literary success and won the Pulitzer Prize for her novel One of Ours.
She's now best known for her Prairie trilogy: O Pioneers!, The Song of the Lark and My Ántonia. She travelled extensively and died in New York in 1947.