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Introduction

Flannery O'Connor

Flannery O’Connor was in many ways fated to write the sort of Southern Gothic fiction she did. O’Connor was a deeply religious Catholic who lived in the overwhelmingly Protestant American South. This gave her an outsider’s perspective, and that was darkened still further by her personal tragedies. Her father died of lupus when she was 15, and because the disease is inherited, O’Connor grew into maturity knowing that she too was likely to develop the illness, as indeed she did. O’Connor died from complications related to lupus when she was only 39. The knowledge of her impending death and its unfairness along with the paradox of her faith in a loving god allowed O’Connor to create dark, complex fiction marked by desperate, brooding characters.

Essential Facts

1. When she was a little girl, O’Connor trained a chicken to walk backwards and became a bit of a celebrity as a result. O’Connor showed her sense of humor when she said, “That was the most exciting thing that ever happened to me. It’s all been downhill from there.”
2. Religion was deeply important to O’Connor. Even though she had poor health, she went to Rome to visit the Pope and often lectured on religion.
3. O’Connor attended the Iowa Writers Workshop while earning her MFA. The collection of stories she wrote for her thesis won the Rinehart-Iowa Fiction award.
4. While her illness limited what she could do physically later in life, O’Connor still managed to keep in touch with many people via letters. She maintained extensive correspondence with other writers and wrote one friend a letter every week.
5. Each year, the University of Georgia honors O’Connor by giving The Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction.