Nov 22, 2008

Good Country People | Biography

Born in Savannah, Georgia, in 1925, Mary Flannery O’Connor attended Peabody High School and then Georgia State College, majoring in English and sociology. She received a master’s degree in literature from the University of Iowa and then spent seven months at the artist retreat at Yaddo in Saratoga Springs working on her first novel, Wise Blood, which she published in 1952.

In 1950, O’Connor suffered her first attack of lupus, a blood disease that had taken the life of her father when she was in her teens. She worked at her writing every day because she knew her life would...