(March 25, 1925–August 3, 1964), born in Savannah, Georgia, was an American author, whose published works include: Wise Blood, 1952; A Good Man is Hard to Find, 1955; The Violent Bear It Away, 1960; Everything That Rises Must Converge, 1965; and Mystery and Manners, 1969. Her work, Complete Stories, was awarded the National Book Award for fiction in 1972.
Flannery O’Connor stated in a talk at Notre Dame University in the spring of 1957:
Southern culture has fostered a type of imagination that has been influenced by Christianity of a not too unorthodox kind and by a strong devotion to the Bible, which has kept our minds attached to the concrete and the living symbol.3838
In Granville Hick’s symposium The Living Novel, Flannery O’Connor wrote:
For I am no disbeliever in the spiritual purpose and no vague believer. I see from the standpoint of Christian orthodoxy. This means that for me the meaning of life is centered in our Redemption by Christ and what I see in the world in relation to that.3839