To open the 2009 annual Eudora Welty Writers’ Symposium, which honors the renowned MUW alumna, Mississippi University for Women President Claudia Limbert Thursday announced a collection of Welty works has come home.

A collection of about 270 items — including correspondence, books, periodicals, recordings and photographs — by or about Eudora Welty was donated to MUW from Andy Murray Coffey, his wife, Katherine, and son, Glenn H. Coffey.

“Eudora Welty is our most famous alumna,” Limbert said, before the symposium opening, standing in front of the “extremely important” collection housed at the Fant Memorial Library on the MUW campus. “It just is a very fitting place for these materials to come home.”

About 20 years ago, Andy Murray Coffey, who resides in Lafayette, La., was buying books from a book dealer in Beverly Hills, Calif.

“We talked about (William) Faulkner books and war books, but he mentioned he and a group of 13 other dealers who were friends of his and had assembled a great collection of books by or about Eudora Welty,” Andy Murray Coffey said. “The dealers had been amassing this collection for about 35 years.”

Knowing his client’s Mississippi roots, the dealer told Andy Murray Coffey he would sell him some Faulkner books, if he bought the Welty collection.

“I elected to give the Eudora Welty collection to MUW because she was a student there (when the college was Mississippi State College for Women),” Coffey continued. “It was always special to her, and she was obviously one of MUW’s best-known alumnae, hence MUW was the absolutely best place for this collection.”

Andy Murray Coffey’s sister, Elizabeth “Bet” Gladney, and other family members also attended MUW.

“I have had so many wonderful relatives and friends from everywhere, and I want to leave all the wonderful books for all to love and enjoy,” he said.

“I believe this is the most significant collection that has been given to Fant Memorial Library,” said MUW Dean of Library Services Gail Gunter.

“Murray, Katherine and Glenn Coffey have honored not only Mr. Coffey’s sister and then her name, by the gift of this magnificent Eudora Welty collection, but their generosity has greatly enriched Fant Memorial Library’s collection,” said Cathy Young, a reference/information literacy librarian and assistant professor at MUW.

“Even though the Coffeys cannot be with us this evening, I want to thank them for giving this spectacular collection to MUW,” Limbert told the crowd at the symposium opening, held at MUW’s Nissan auditorium in Parkinson Hall. “I also want to thank Ms. Cathy Young, who worked directly with Mr. Coffey to bring this collection here to MUW.”

The Eudora Welty Writers’ Symposium, a weekend of events which draw authors, journalists, scholars and artists to MUW, opened Thursday evening with a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and Mississippi native, Natasha Trethewey, reading from her third volume of poetry, “Native Guard,” which won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 2007.

Among other awards, Trethewey was awarded the Mississippi Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts and named Georgia Woman of the Year in 2008.

She holds the Phillis Wheatley Distinguished Chair in Poetry at Emory University in Atlanta, and currently is on leave to teach at Yale University.

The theme of this year’s symposium is “Time Goes Like A Dream No Matter How Hard You Run,” a sentence from Welty’s short story, “A Shower of Gold,” from her collection, “The Golden Apples.”

“The dream of time is on all our minds as we celebrate MUW’s 125th anniversary and Eudora Welty’s centenary year,” said Dr. Kendall Dunkelberg, symposium director. “We look to stories of our past, which at times can be chillingly honest, to inform our dreams for the future.”

The winner of the 2009 Welty Prize for a book of scholarship in women’s studies, Southern studies or literature also was announced during the symposium opening.

The Welty Prize winner, Pearl Amelia McHaney, will discuss her recently edited books — “Eudora Welty as Photogapher” and “Occasions: Selected Writings By Eudora Welty” — during the symposium weekend events.

She also will display photographs by Welty and read from Welty’s stories.

The symposium continues today with sessions with novelists Tony Earley and Ravi Howard, an Alabama native, and poet Becky Gould Gibson.

Events this afternoon include sessions with Melissa Delbridge, reading from her memoir set in Tuscaloosa, Ala., Jim Murphy, author of a volume of poems, and a round-table discussion with all symposium authors.

The symposium concludes Sunday; for a complete list of symposium events, visit www.muw.edu.

All sessions are free and open to the public.

WRITER’S SYMPOSIUM EVENTS

Today

1:30 - 4:45 p.m.

• Melissa Delbridge, author of the memoir “Family Bible”

• Jim Murphy, author of “Heaven Overland” and the poetry chapbook, “The Memphis Sun”

• Round-table discussion with all authors; theme will be “Time, Dreams,

  and Writing”

• Reception for retrospective issue of the Dilettanti magazine, with a short reading and refreshments

Saturday

9:30 a.m.-noon