find it so difficult to write stories is that they forget how much time

and patience is required to convince through the senses."

BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAYMore than thirty years after her death at age thirty-nine,

Flannery O'Connor is considered one of the great writers of the twentieth

century. Although she wrote just two short novels and about thirty stories,

O'Connor's originality set her fiction apart. A Roman Catholic who was

born and raised in the Protestant South, O'Connor wrote mostly about poor,

white Southerners undergoing struggles of faith and belief. Always present

in her stories is a dual sense of evil and divinity, capturing both the

reality of human weakness and the redemptive power of God's grace. O'Connor'

s stories, written in simple, unadorned language, portray conflicts experienced

by bizarre, strange, and often deformed characters.

O'Connor was born on March 25, 1925, in Savannah, Georgia, the daughter

of Edward Francis O'Connor, a real estate broker, and Regina Cline O'Connor.

She lived in the city until she was thirteen when her parents moved to

Milledgeville, a small farming town. A few years late

for Women, where she drew illustrations for the school newspaper and yearbook

was published in 1946, the year before she graduated from Iowa with a masters

and edited The Corinthian, a literary magazine. After graduating from Georgia

located in Saratoga Springs, New York.

at universities. Still, writing drained her of much of her energy.

of Iowa Writers' Workshop in Iowa City. Her first short story, "The Geranium,"

bigoted white woman is faced with the stark reality that black people occupy

O'Connor frequently admitted to having mixed emotions about her chosen

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