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Sherwood Anderson Festival

Beginning in 1929 and while living here, renowned author Sherwood Anderson’s works Hello Towns, Nearer the Grass Roots, Perhaps Women, Beyond Desire, Death in the Woods and Other Stories, Puzzled America, Kit Brandon, and Home Town are published. Memoirs, published in 1942, is printed posthumously. Some of these works are fictional accounts based on small town American life and two are editorial and essay collections.

Anderson, originally from Ohio, once said, “I am a lover and have not found my thing to love”. In 1933, after three unsatisfying marriages (including three children from one marriage) he meets and marries Marion native Eleanor Copenhaver, a match that seems to make him happy in love at last. Through his relationship with Eleanor and her work as a national official with the YWCA and the labor movement, Anderson begins to understand on a deeper level the struggle of the poor and disadvantaged. He resolves to shed light on the hardships of America’s working class through his writings and remains true to his vow in later works. Collections of love letters between Anderson and Eleanor Copenhaver Anderson have been printed in more recent years.

Privately owned, his writing cabin and home are both maintained for appointment-only tours during an annual Sherwood Anderson Festival. A Sherwood Anderson Short Story Contest is a part of the annual festival. Festival events are in partnership with the neighboring Town of Abingdon and Washington County, Virginia, in celebration of Anderson’s work and his legacy to American literature.

The building housing The Marion Publishing Company, where Anderson printed during his newspaper career in Marion, remains at 111 N. Park St. For more information, contact the Smyth-Bland Regional Library, Sherwood Anderson Archives, (276) 783-2323 or www.sbrl.org