Flannery O'Connor, was born on March 25, 1925 in Savannah, Georgia. She went to parochial school in Savannah, and when her father became ill with Lupus her family moved to Milledgeville, Georgia, where she attended public high school. O'Connor's family were devout Catholics, and her own religious beliefs were prominent themes in her work. In 1942, O'Connor entered Georgia State College for women. At Georgia State, she wrote for a literary magazine and graduated with a degree in English. In 1945, she entered the writing program at the University of Iowa and earned a Masters of Fine Arts degree in Creative Writing. 

After leaving the University of Iowa, she attended the Yaddo artists' colony near Saratoga Springs, New York and then lived in Connecticut and New York. However, while living in New York she became ill with lupus and returned to Milledgeville to live with her mother. She lived on her family's farm raising peacocks, which featured in her stories, for the rest of her life. 

In 1952, Wise Blood was published and received mixed reviews. However, her next volume, A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories, received critical acclaim.  During 1957, she gave several lectures at various universities and received a grant from the National Institute of Arts and Letters. The following year Flannery O'Connor and her mother made a pilgrimage to Europe. Her cousin paid for the trip, on the condition that O'Connor bathe in the healing waters at Lourdes. The seventeen-day trip included London, Barcelona, Lisbon, and Rome, where she had a group audience with the Pope. O'Connor did not particularly enjoy the trip, feeling that she was too ill to enjoy the experience.

Upon returning to Milledgeville, she finished and published The Violent Bear it Away.  Flannery O'Connor continued to lecture at numerous colleges and wrote reviews for the diocesan publications The Georgia Bulletin, and The Southern Cross. However, during this time she was very sick, having developed an ovarian tumor which prompted the return of lupus. She died on August 3, 1964, and Everything that Rises Must Converge was published posthumously.

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Articles About O'Connor, Flannery

A Good Writer Is Hard To Find: The Search For Flannery O'Connor

November 27, 2007

To try and get more from a writer than what you see on the page, depends on the writer and their ability to make you see, and of course your own imagination. When that work is so distinct and the characters so clear, you sometimes think you know something about that writer and who they were. It could be argued that a writer can be found in their words, but a good writer may be hard to find in those words which may often confound the reader rather than betray the writer.