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Mary Flannery O'Connor was born in Savannah, Georgia, an only
child.
~ Her father was a
realtor, but later worked for a construction company. Her mother came from a prominent family in the state.
~ In first grade, Flannery trained a chicken to walk
backward. Pathe News, then shown in movie theaters, sent a
cameraman to record her chicken in action.
~ When O'Connor was
12, her family moved to Milledgeville, Georgia, her mother's birthplace.
She attended Peabody High School and enrolled in the Georgia
State College for Women. There, she edited the college
magazine.
~ Flannery's first
published works were her cartoons.
~ She
neither married nor had children. She spent her free time
raising peacocks.
~ In
1950, she suffered her first attack of Lupus (a chronic
inflammatory blood disease that had killed her father) just as
she was finishing her first novel, Wise
Blood.
~ In spite of
the illness, O'Connor continued to write and occasionally she
lectured about creative writing in colleges. "I write every
day for at least two hours," she said in an interview in
1952, "and I spend the rest of my time largely in the
society of ducks."
~ By 1955, Flannery was forced to use crutches. Knowing she had little time
left, she dedicated herself to her writing. She moved to
Andalusia, her uncle's quail farm in Milledgeville, and
settled into a secluded life.
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~ After an
abdominal operation reactivated the Lupus, she died at the age
of 39. She was only expected to live five years after being
diagnosed, but she lived nearly fifteen.
~ Along with authors Carson McCullers and Eudora Welty, Flannery belonged to the
Southern Gothic tradition that focused on the decaying South.
~ Her second collection of short stories,
Everything That Rises Must Converge, was published
posthumously in 1965.
~ The
Complete Short Stories contained several
stories that had not previously appeared in book form.
~ Flannery's letters, published as The
Habit of Being, reveal her conscious
craftsmanship in writing and the role of Roman Catholicism in
her life.
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Director John
Huston read Wise Blood in 1978--he received a copy from
Michael Fitzgerald, whose father had been Flannery's literary
executor--and wanted to film it.
~ Against all odds, Michael Fitzgerald
secured the money for
the production, and wrote the screenplay along with his brother,
Benedict. Most of the film was shot in Macon, Georgia.
~ In
her short lifetime, Flannery published two novels, thirty-two short
stories and many reviews and commentaries.
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The Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction, established
in 1983, is an annual prize awarded by the University of Georgia
Press in honor of the memorable writer.
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