"Why I Live at the P.O.," a critically acclaimed story by Welty, in which a young woman's difficult relationship with her parents is exposed with humor.

Carson McCullers also writes of the Southern experience although from a different point of view. Her novels The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter and Reflections in a Golden Eye were written in the same era as Welty's first stories.

"A Rose for Emily," a short story by fellow Southerner William Faulkner is also about an older single woman.

Toni Morrison's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Beloved examines the aftermath of slavery in rural Ohio in the late nineteenth-century.

The Optimist's Daughter, Welty's semi-autobiographical novel about the strained ties between a parent and child won the Pulitzer Prize in 1972.