A bronze statue of renowned American author Willa Cather was unveiled on Wednesday in the U.S. Capitol.
The statue was created by Littleton Alston, a professor of sculpture at Creighton University, and she became the first black artist to have work represented in the national collection.
Cather, the Pulitzer Prize winner whose works include My Ántonia and O Pioneers, spent her young years in Nebraska.
She graduated from the University of Nebraska in 1895, and a year later she was hired to write for a women’s magazine called Home Monthly.
Cather wrote various novels and poems that “truly feels like it grew from the soil of Nebraska,” according to U.S. Sen. Deb Fischer of Nebraska.
Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said, “Nebraskans are lucky to call Willa Cather one of their own.”
Cather passed away in 1947 at the age of 73, leaving behind a legacy that made her one of the most prominent figures in American literature.
