“For a moment our eyes can see and our ears can hear that which is about us always.” On this day in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Winchester, Virginia, poet, novelist, and journalist Willa Sibert Cather (1873–1947) was born, the eldest child of Irish immigrants. Her stories became a lantern for readers drawn to wide skies, steady courage, and everyday miracles held close to the land.

“That is happiness: to be dissolved into something complete and great,” she said. Raised on a farm in Webster County, Nebraska, she felt both the joy and the weight of the plains. She entered the University of Nebraska intending to study medicine, then followed the quiet call of literature, trusting the direction her heart recognized.

“The end is nothing; the road is all,” she said. Cather believed in striving for excellence and published her first short story in 1892. She later taught high school English and Latin, guiding young minds while finding the voice that would shape American letters.

“Nothing really matters but living,” she insisted. “Accomplishments are the ornaments of life, they come second.” Her writing in O Pioneers! (1913), The Song of the Lark (1915), and My Ántonia (1918) offered a passionate portrait of the pioneer spirit and a deep love for the land. These stories with strong and spirited female characters became American classics.

“Where there is great love there are always miracles,” she believed. Cather earned the Pulitzer Prize in 1923 for One of Ours, her story of an American named Claude Wheeler who journeys to the front in World War I. In the novel she wrote, “The dead might as well speak to the living as the old to the young.”

Honored by Writer’s Digest among the Top 100 Writers, Willa Cather returned often to a clear truth: life reveals itself when we pay attention. When the heart grows quiet, even for a moment, our eyes can see and our ears can hear the beauty that has been with us all along.