Willa Cather (1873–1947) was born in Virginia. When she was ten her family moved to Nebraska, where her father was a frontier farmer and owner of a farm loan and mortgage business. Cather graduated from the University of Nebraska in 1895. She began writing in college, reviewing books, plays, and music for the Nebraska Journal.

In the late 1890s and early 1900s, she lived in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and worked as a newspaper and magazine writer and editor before teaching high school English and Latin. In 1906, she moved to New York City and joined McClure's magazine, first as a contributing editor from 1906 to 1908 and then as managing editor from 1908 to 1912.

Her early work about the Nebraska prairie and its pioneers made her famous. She is also remembered for her powerful female figures, who are often unconventional, as was Cather herself.

Her first novel, Alexander's Bridge (1912), was published when Cather was thirty-nine. Her other works include the poetry collection April Twilights (1903), the short story collections The Troll Garden (1912), and the novels O Pioneers! (1913), The Song of the Lark (1915), My Ántonia (1918), A Lost Lady (1923), The Professor's House (1925), and Death Comes for the Archbishop (1926).

Cather was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for the novel One of Ours (1922) and the Howells Medal from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters in 1930 for Death Comes for the Archbishop. My Ántonia is widely considered to be her finest work.