Flannery O'Connor

Flannery O'Connor was born in Savannah, Georgia, on March 25, 1925, to Regina Cline and Edward Francis O'Connor. She was the only child of her parents, who came from two of the oldest Catholic families in Georgia. O'Connor's early education took place in the parochial schools in Savannah, where she developed a love for art and reading.

Critics have noted O'Connor's novels, Wise Blood (1952) and The Violent Bear It Away (1960), and her short stories, collected in works such as A Good Man Is Hard to Find (1955), for their exploration of religious faith and a spare literary style. O'Connor was educated at the Georgia State College for Women and later at the Iowa Writers' Workshop. She wrote much of Wise Blood at the colony of artists at Yaddo in upstate New York. O'Connor spent most of her adult life on Andalusia, the ancestral farm of her family outside Milledgeville, Georgia. She wrote Everything That Rises Must Converge (1964) and was known for her explorations of religious themes and southern racial issues, combining the comic with the tragic.

O'Connor was born in Savannah, Georgia in 1925, the only child of Catholic parents. She enrolled at the Georgia State College for Women in 1945 and continued her studies at the University of Iowa's writing program. Her first published story, 'The Geranium,' was written while she was still a student. O'Connor moved to New York after university and continued to write. However, in 1952, she learned that she was dying of lupus, a disease that had also afflicted her father. For the remainder of her life, she and her mother lived on the family dairy farm, Andalusia, outside Millidgeville, Georgia. O'Connor raised various animals for pleasure, including peacocks, pheasants, swans, geese, chickens, and Muscovy ducks. She was also a skilled amateur painter. O'Connor died in the summer of 1964.