Flannery O’Connor
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Displaced in the Grotesque
O’Connor is so often remembered as a misanthropic homebody—but she was comforted by the idea of a God that gave preferential treatment to the most vulnerable among us. For the Paris Review, Dave Griffith writes about reading Flannery O’Connor’s “The…
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Adventures Are Overrated
For The Millions, Bill Morris wonders what value adventures and life experiences have on writing good fiction. While at first Morris is convinced that adventure is necessary to write quality work, Flannery O’Connor’s Mystery and Manners convinces him that travel and exploring the…
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The Rumpus Interview with Lincoln Michel
Lincoln Michel talks about his debut short story collection, Upright Beasts, his interest in monsters, and what sources of culture outside of literature inspire him.
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Introducing: Flannery O’Connor
O’Connor is nothing if not overwhelming. Over at Electric Literature, Adrian Van Young has compiled a Flannery O’Connor reading primer to help those approaching the body of work of “the greatest American writer ever to load up a typewriter,” just reissued…
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Plot and Prejudice
At Electric Literature, Matthew Salesses discusses the works of Joseph Conrad and Flannery O’Connor to explore the problem of unconscious prejudice and unintentional racism in writing, and how writers can avoid it: The writing of fiction cannot treat marginalized characters…
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The Last Book I Loved: The Way We Weren’t by Jill Talbot
None of us has telepathy, and even the most empathetic of us can’t really experience the world as another person experiences it. So we read essays and memoirs.
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The Saturday Rumpus Essay: Growing Up Gaming
“Is this inclusive or exclusive?” he asked with a creased brow. “I don’t like the idea that we’re being treated as a joke.”
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The Gods of Southern Gothic
At the Guardian, author M.O. Walsh tries to account for the global popularity of southern gothic literature. While he attributes much of southern gothic literature’s success to a tradition of oral storytelling, he also suggests that it is the southern novelist’s…
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A Prayer from Flannery
Please help me dear God to be a good writer and to get something else accepted. Juan Vidal examines how T.S. Eliot, Flannery O’Connor, and Madeleine L’Engle approach prayer, and how prayer helps one derive meaning in a creative life.
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The Rumpus Interview with Christy Crutchfield
Novelist Christy Crutchfield talks about her debut, How to Catch a Coyote, world building, inspiration, icky fiction, the role of mystery, and the marathon of novel writing
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Writing Under the Influence of Catholicism
William Giraldi talks about writing in spite of Catholicism: The Catholic O’Connor, in other words, has no Catholic agenda when she sits at the campfire to tell her story—across her singular canon all is chaos in search of grace, all is enigma…
