Professional Activities, Lectures, Awards, and Interviews, 1922-1978 and undated

This subseries contains materials that document the numerous activities in which Porter participated as a result of her writing and publishing career. Many of these activities provided her financial support when her writing did not, particularly in the 1940s through the early 1960s. These records concern her lecturing and teaching; the interviews she granted; awards she received for her writings; and the professional organizations, including political organizations, to which she belonged or in which she had an interest.

Most of the correspondence concerns lecturing and teaching engagements at numerous colleges, universities, and other organizations and the artist's agents that arranged these. Other organizations, including clubs, library associations, and secondary schools, also engaged Porter to lecture. There is also correspondence with television stations, mostly WCBS-TV in New York City, where she appeared on Camera 3. This subseries documents not only the hundreds of lectures and readings that Porter delivered in the 1940s through the 1960s, but the significant number she cancelled because of ill health. The correspondence documents both the teaching appointments she accepted, including Stanford University, the University of Virginia, and Washington and Lee University, and the numerous positions she did not accept, including Colorado State College, which required faculty to sign a loyalty oath, and the University of Texas at Austin.

A large amount of correspondence is with colleges and universities concerning lecturing, teaching, honorary degrees, literary festivals and writers' conferences, and donating her papers to the libraries. There is notable correspondence with Stanford University, the University of Virginia, Washington and Lee University, Howard Payne University, and the University of Maryland. There is a great deal of material from agencies that awarded Miss Porter fellowships, including the Guggenheim Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Conference Board of Associated Research Councils (administrators for the Fulbright), and the Department of State (also associated with the Fulbright).

Other organizations represented include the Katherine Anne Porter Foundation, which Porter started at the University of Maryland in 1966 and dissolved in 1973; the League for Mutual Aid; and the Library of Congress Fellows in American Letters. There is extensive correspondence with the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Much of this correspondence is rather routine, but it also includes the nomination forms for the Academy that Porter received. Many of these are heavily annotated with her opinions of the individuals being nominated. The American Academy of Arts and Letters was also involved in many contemporary issues affecting artists, most notably anti-Communist activities of the mid-twentieth century. There are extensive materials related to the New York artistic colony Yaddo that document not only the time Porter spent there, but her involvement with the Corporation of Yaddo and her long friendship with its director, Elizabeth Ames. There is a questionnaire sent to former residents of Yaddo, asking them to comment on their experience there; Porter's very substantial answer is lodged in the undated Yaddo correspondence. Porter's duties for the Department of State, including her 1954 Fulbright appointment in Belgium and her 1960 Mexico trip, are documented in that correspondence. Correspondence from Lyndon Johnson, Hubert Humphrey, the National Citizens Committee for Johnson & Humphrey, and the National Committee of Arts, Letters & Sciences for John F. Kennedy for President document Porter's place in the Washington, D.C., social scene. One undated letter to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People includes her extensive comments on slavery and "Uncle Tomism."

There is material on awards Porter received, including the A. Harris & Co. Texas Award (1950), the Pulitzer Prize (1966), the National Book Award (1966), and the Brandeis University Creative Arts Award (1972). She received the American Academy of Arts and Sciences' gold medal in 1962, but returned it in 1972 in protest of their actions toward Ezra Pound. Correspondence relating to interviews is included for Winston Bode, Enrique Lopez, Alice Denham, the Maryland Historical Society, Simon Blow, Charles Mills, Roy Newquist, the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Francis Sanken, Anne Bruno, Giselle Freund, Ethel Beckwith (Bridgeport Herald), the New York Post, Doris Grumbach, Matthieu Galey, and Marc Saporta. Materials are arranged alphabetically by agency name, with personal names listed below; many individuals have correspondence for several different organizations.

Autograph requests, form letters, interview requests, lecture requests, and political correspondence are filed alphabetically at the end of the first alphabetical sequence. These include pieces of correspondence too small or various to be grouped by agency or personal name. The items in these subject categories are filed chronologically.

Related materials may be found in Series II: Writings; Series III: Professional Activities; Series IV: Financial and Legal; Series V: Personal; Series VI: Clippings; Series VII: Printed Matter; Series X: Audio Recordings; and Series XII: Photographs.