Writer's Corner

Flannery O'Connor

"Does one's integrity ever lie in what he is not able to do?" (from Wise Blood, 1952)

Born March 25, 1925, Savannah, GA, an only child of a Roman Catholic Family, she was raised Catholic and attend a parochial school. It was this religious background (also growing up in the Bible-belt) that was a common theme in her writing through out her short lifetime. An example of this can be found in her first of two novels, "Wise Blood", where a young Hazel Motes attempts to establish "Church Without Christ". The title "Wise Blood" alludes to intuition, and the created church focus on a humanistic reliance of self as opposed to faith in God. It was later made into a movie in 1979.

O'Connor graduated from the University of Iowa with a Masters of Fine Arts in Literature in 1947. She was a major contributor to the Southern Gothic genre of writing and during her career published two novels, thirty-one short stories, and other speeches and letters. Much of her writing focused on the darker or "grotesque" side of southern living. Her finest work can be found in her short stories, where she dissected the southern family and some brutal resolutions to conflicts. She died at the age of 39 of complications from Lupus, the same disease that her father had died of in 1941.

Links:
Stories
Everything That Rises Must Converge
The Coat

Biography