Mary Flannery O'Connor (March 25, 1925 – August 3, 1964) was an American novelist, short story writer, and essayist.

In her writing, an unsentimental acceptance or rejection of the limitations, imperfections or differences of these characters (whether attributed to disability, race, crime, religion or sanity) typically underpins the drama.

Her posthumously compiled Complete Stories won the 1972 U.S. National Book Award for Fiction and has been the subject of enduring praise.

[5] The Flannery O'Connor Childhood Home museum is located at 207 E. Charlton Street on Lafayette Square.

[11][12] Many critics have claimed that the idiosyncratic style and approach of these early cartoons shaped her later fiction, in important ways.

[17] During the summer of 1948, O'Connor continued to work on Wise Blood at Yaddo, an artists' community in Saratoga Springs, New York, where she also completed several short stories.

[18] In 1949 O'Connor met and eventually accepted an invitation to stay with Robert Fitzgerald (a well-known translator of the classics) and his wife, Sally, in Ridgefield, Connecticut.

[20] O'Connor's two novels are Wise Blood (1952) (made into a film by John Huston) and The Violent Bear It Away (1960).

She also has had several books of her other writings published, and her enduring influence is attested by a growing body of scholarly studies of her work.

"[24] She had a deeply sardonic sense of humor, often based on the disparity between her characters' limited perceptions and the extraordinary fate awaiting them.

O'Connor used such characters' inability to come to terms with disability, race, poverty, and fundamentalism, other than in sentimental illusions, to illustrate her view that the secular world was failing in the twentieth century.

She addressed the Holocaust in her story "The Displaced Person", racial integration in "Everything That Rises Must Converge", and intersexuality, in "A Temple of the Holy Ghost".

Politically, she maintained a broadly progressive outlook, in connection with her faith, voting for John F. Kennedy in 1960 and outwardly supporting the work of Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement.

[25] Despite this, she made her personal stance on race and integration known, throughout her life, such as in several letters to playwright Maryat Lee, which she wrote under the pseudonym "Mrs Turpin", saying, "You know, I'm an integrationist, by principle, and a segregationist, by taste.

Her daily routine was to attend Mass, write in the morning, then, spend the rest of the day recuperating and reading.

Despite the debilitating effects of the steroid drugs used to treat O'Connor's lupus, she, nonetheless, made over sixty appearances at lectures to read her works.

Throughout her life, O'Connor maintained a wide correspondence[31] with writers that included Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Bishop,[32] English professor Samuel Ashley Brown,[32] Catholic nun and literary critic M. Bernetta Quinn,[33] and playwright Maryat Lee.

In 1955, Betty Hester, an Atlanta file clerk, wrote O'Connor a letter, expressing admiration for her work.

[35][22] Emory University also contains the more than 600 letters O'Connor wrote to her mother, Regina, nearly every day, while she was pursuing her literary career in Iowa City, New York, and Massachusetts.

Some of these describe "travel itineraries and plumbing mishaps, ripped stockings and roommates with loud radios," as well as her request for the homemade mayonnaise of her childhood.

From 1956 through 1964, she wrote more than one hundred book reviews for two Catholic diocesan newspapers in Georgia: The Bulletin and The Southern Cross.

[39][page needed] Her reviews consistently confronted theological and ethical themes in books written by the most serious and demanding theologians of her time.

[40] Professor of English Carter Martin, an authority on O'Connor's writings, notes simply that her "book reviews are at one with her religious life".

[48] In June 2015, the United States Postal Service honored O'Connor with a new postage stamp, the 30th issuance in the Literary Arts series.

The announcement also mentions, "This renaming comes after recent recognition of Flannery O'Connor, a 20th century Catholic American writer, and the racism present in some of her work.