P4+Erica+K


 * Flannery O’Connor**

By: Erica Krauss Flannery O’Connor was born in 1925 and died on August 3, 1964. She was born as the only child of a Catholic family in Savannah, Georgia. Her heritage shaped her writing. Flannery’s father, Edward, was a realtor owner, while her mother, Regina, came from a prominent family in the state. At the age of 12, she moved to Milledgeville with her family, which happens to be her mother’s birthplace. She went to Peabody High School and enrolled in the Georgia State College For Women. She graduated in 1945 with A.B. She went on to the University of Iowa at which she went to Writer’s workshops, which were lead by Paul Engle. She published her first short story at 21 (‘The Geranium’). The next year she got the degree of Master of Fine Arts in Literature. She lived for seven months in Yaddo, Saratoga Springs, New York, in 1947, in an estate for writers, painters, and musicians, which was left by the Trask Family. She then published 4 chapters of //Wise Blood in Mademoiselle, Sewanee Review,// and //Partisan Review// in 1948 and 1949. The full novel came out in 1952. The novel dealt with a religious enthusiast who wanted to create a church without Christ. In 1950 O’Connor had her first attack from disseminated lupus, which was a disease that killed her father. She went back to Milledgeville and live on her mother’s dairy farm. Even with the illness, she kept writing and occasionally lectured about creative writing in colleges. She lived and wrote in Ridgefield, Connecticut until her illness redirected her in 1951. She named Robert Fitzgerald her literary executor. From around 1955 she had to use crutches. The abdominal operation made the lupus come back into effect, which she died from on August 3, 1964 at the age of 39.