(Mary) Flannery O’Connor

"Everywhere I go, I'm asked if I think the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them."*

It wasn't until O'Connor was accepted to the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop in 1945 that she thought of herself primarily as a fiction writer. Before, as an undergraduate student, she viewed herself first as a cartoonist.** O'Connor's years at Iowa enabled her to share and shape her fiction - often satirical stories of characters that are spiritually or emotionally disturbed.

Born in Savannah, Georgia, she attended the Georgia State College for Women where she majored in English and social science. Upon graduation in 1945, O'Connor was invited to the UI Writers' Workshop. It was there she earned an M.F.A. degree in literature in 1947.

In 1951, O'Connor returned to Georgia. She had been diagnosed with disseminated lupus, a disease that weakens the body's tissues. Although lupus made the use of crutches necessary, she remained intellectually active - writing, painting, and lecturing.

O'Connor's novels include Wise Blood (1952) and The Violent Bare It Away (1960). Her stories are collected in A Good Man Is Hard to Find (1955) and Everything That Rises Must Converge (1965). Flannery O'Connor: The Complete Stories was published in 1971 and won the 1972 National Book Award for fiction.

* Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose (Farrar, 1969).
** Hyman, Stanley Edgar. Flannery O'Connor. Minneapolis, MN: Minnesota UP, 1966.
Author biography in part by Deanna Sue Thomann, The Iowa Literary Walk website

Alumni |Iowa Writers' Workshop
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