Benjamin Taylor received a 2021 Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His memoir, The Hue and Cry at Our House, received the 2018 Los Angeles Times/Christopher Isherwood Prize and was named a New York Times Editors’ Choice; his Proust: The Search was named a Best Book of 2016 by The New York Times Book Review and The Observer (London); and his Naples Declared: A Walk Around the Bay was named a Best Book of 2012 in The New Yorker. He is also the author of two novels. He edited Saul Bellow: Letters, named a Best Book of 2010 in The New York Times and The Washington Post, and Bellow’s There Is Simply Too Much to Think About: Collected Nonfiction, also a New York Times Editors’ Choice. Taylor is a past fellow and current trustee of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and serves as president of the Edward F. Albee Foundation. Chasing Bright Medusas, his biography of Willa Cather, was published in November.
Ashley Olson has been a member of the National Willa Cather Center’s staff since 2008 and has served as the organization’s Executive Director since 2014. Olson administers the museum, arts center, ten historic sites, and a 612-acre native prairie that make up the largest collection of nationally designated historic sites dedicated to an American author. Olson earned a master’s degree in Public Administration from the University of Nebraska at Omaha and a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She lives in Red Cloud, Nebraska. For information about the Center, go to https://www.willacather.org/
