born March 25, 1925, Savannah, Ga., U.S.
died Aug. 3, 1964, Milledgeville, Ga.
U.S. writer.
She spent most of her life on her mother's farm in Milledgeville, Ga. A devout Roman Catholic, she usually set her works in the rural South and often examined the relationship between the individual and God by putting her characters in grotesque and extreme situations. Her first novel, Wise Blood (1952), combines a keen ear for common speech, a caustic religious imagination, and a flair for the absurd that characterized all of her work. With the story collections A Good Man Is Hard to Find (1955) and Everything That Rises Must Converge (1965), she was acclaimed as a master of the form. Her other work of fiction was the novel The Violent Bear It Away (1960). Long crippled by lupus, she died at age 39. The Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction is the preeminent American award of its kind.