EUDORA WELTY AND ANTON CHEKHOV: A LONG INTIMACY BETWEEN STRANGERS O.V. Spachil Kuban State University ul. <...> Stavropolskaya, 149, Krasnodar, Russia, 350040 The article using concrete examples from Welty’s stories deals with influence of A.P. Chekhov on E. Welty (1909—2001). <...> Russian writer’s prose influenced Welty’s use and love for detail, priority for dialogue, metaphors, symbols, simplifying and even eliminating of the plot, desire for brevity. <...> Stylistic similarities reflect Chekhov’s and Welty’s affinity for such cornerstone concepts of human existence as life, death, love, human dignity and justice. <...> Eudora Welty loved to quote Henry Green [1. <...> P. 101] who said that “prose should be a long intimacy between strangers”. <...> She did read Chekhov all her life and whenever asked by interviewers about her favorite authors and the major influences in her life she never failed to mention her love and appreciation of the Russian writer. <...> In the videotaped interview conducted by Patricia Wheatley in the spring of 1986 when asked if she had authors she was passionate about Eudora Welty said: “Oh, yes. <...> It was there that Welty was reintroduced to her sponsor, Professor James McConkey, himself a writer and a student of Chekhov [3. <...> I was also shown two books by J. McConkey. <...> Jim McConkey, May 6, 1977 (the last day of the Chekhov festival)”. <...> The other book was edited 36 Spachil O.V. Eudora Welty and Anton Chekhov: A Long Intimacy Between Strangers by McConkey. <...> P. 74—75], and this declaration together with her essay on this writer are both quoted in the recent three-volume fundamental study on Chekhov published by the Russian Academy of Sciences [4. <...> P. 679, 722], gives Welty worldwide credit in the field of Chekhovian criticism. <...> Eudora Welty’s essays on other writers are revealing about her own work, often being used by researchers for a better understanding of this author’s fiction. <...> In “Looking with Eudora Welty” Ruth M. Vande Kieft points out that the essay on Chekhov and all the other pieces included into The Eye of the Story <...>