Flannery O’Conner

Mary Flannery O'Connor Born on March 25, 1925, in Savannah, Georgia Died on August 3, 1964 She died from lupus, which she had been fighting for over ten years before she passed away. Lupus is a chronic inflammatory disease that occurs when your body's immune system attacks your own tissues and organs.

Savannah, Georgia Born and Raised She was an only child O'Connor described herself as a "pigeon-toed child with a receding chin and a you-leave- me-alone-or-I'll-bite-you complex.” When she was only 15 her father died of lupus.

O'Connor attended the Peabody Laboratory School, from which she graduated in 1942 Georgia State College for Women in an accelerated three-year program, and graduated in June 1945 with a Social sciences degree. In 1946, she was accepted into the prestigious Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa, where she first went to study journalism. O'Connor wrote more than one hundred book reviews for two Catholic diocesan newspapers in Georgia.

Flannery O’Conner was a lonely women. She never married. Because O’Connor never married, questions about her sexuality have been raised. O’Connor decided not to marry because of her writing. Her disease made her so weak that she could only devote her energy to one thing and she chose writing over a husband. O’Connor never had a long-lasting relationship with a man because she, “‘became a lifelong victim of unrequited love.”

O’Conner’s Career She had wrote short stories and articles and drew cartoons for her high school newspaper. She did the same thing in college. After college in 1947 she was accepted at Yaddo, an artists' retreat in Saratoga Springs, New York She reviewed works for the “Georgia Bulletin” (off and on in her adult life) Her last job was working for the “Atlanta Journal” before she died. Between the years of 1955-1963, O’Connor traveled a few times a year around the country giving lectures and reading her works

Major Recognized Works 1952 Wise Blood: The first of O'Connor's two novels concerns a zealot who finds the Church of Christ Without Christ, then makes himself blind and tortures himself after killing a false prophet of his church. 1960 The Violent Bear It Away: O'Connor's second and final novel concerns the efforts of a backwoods prophet, Francis Marion Tarwater, to escape his calling. The book is an elaborate, symbolic treatment of the soul's tortuous struggle for faith, drawing on the author's characteristic Southern elements. Short story collections: A Good Man Is Hard to Find, 1955 Everything That Rises Must Converge, 1965 The Complete Stories, 1971 —National Book Award

She was a Southern writer who often wrote in a Southern Gothic style and relied heavily on regional settings and southern characters. O'Connor's writing also reflected her own Roman Catholic faith, and frequently examined questions of morality and ethics.

This is her style of writing Her novels are filled with black humor and written in a sharply honed style. This is her style of writing I would say her writing would fit under the darker writing in American Contemporary literature.

Sadly her works were not recognized in other literary works or in pop culture.

Bibliography http://www.biography.com/people/flannery-oconnor-9426760#synopsis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flannery_O'Connor http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/lupus/basics/definition/con-20019676 http://archive.csustan.edu/english/reuben/pal/chap10/oconnor.html http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/arts-culture/flannery-oconnor-1925-1964