O’Connor was shaped by her time with Sally and Robert Fitzgerald

In Iowa, Flannery O'Connor decided to pursue creative writing

O’Connor enrolled in a master’s program in journalism at the University of Iowa, intending to pursue political cartooning, but quickly switched to creative writing. Her thesis was a collection of stories called “The Geranium.” The title story was eventually her first published piece.

Watch a Yale professor’s take on O’Connor’s ‘Wise Blood’

O’Connor’s first novel is about Hazel Motes, a World War II veteran who returns home and sets out to form an anti-religious congregation. It’s a striking debut and one that Yale professor Amy Hungerford taught in her course “The American Novel Since 1945.”

Poet Robert Lowell encouraged O'Connor to turn away from commercial appeal

When O’Connor secured a publisher for “Wise Blood,” her publisher envisioned it as a broad, commercial comedy, something Lowell—the accomplished poet whom she met after graduate school at Yaddo, an artist colony in upstate New York—suggested she avoid, encouraging her to lean into her more esoteric and darker interests. This interview with O’Connor biographer Brad Gooch elaborates on that advice.

O’Connor’s mother insisted her daughter’s corpse smile

At 39, Flannery O’Connor died from lupus. Sally Fitzgerald privately recounted that Regina O’Connor asked a mortician to have the deceased Flannery’s face be fixed in a smile “with the teeth showing.” Ironically, it was a detail that would’ve been at home in one of her daughter’s stories.

O’Connor shared lengthy, intimate letters with Betty Hester, a recluse

When O’Connor’s private letters were released in “The Habit of Being,” readers wondered about the identity of “A,” who had an intimate (possibly romantic) relationship with the writer. Decades later, “A” was revealed to be Betty Hester, a reclusive file clerk. Scholars still debate whether the two were romantically involved.

O’Connor’s stories feature Southern outcasts thrust into bizarre situations

The Deep South is presented as a shadowy place, filled with scheming figures posing as upstanding citizens, like the conniving door-to-door Bible salesman of “Good Country People,” and smug intellectuals receiving their comeuppances, like the condescending college graduate of “Everything That Rises Must Converge.”

O’Connor’s caretaker Emma Jackson had an early impact on her views

Flannery O'Connor had conflicting views on race. She criticized racism and mocked segregationists, yet made racist jokes. Scholars recently unearthed details from the O’Connor archive about Emma Jackson, a Black woman hired young Flannery's caretaker. O'Connor recounted learning about racism after being scolded for spending too much time with Jackson.

After being diagnosed with lupus, O'Connor moved to her family's Georgia farm

In 1950, O'Connor began feeling ill and returned to Georgia, where she was diagnosed with lupus, the same disease that killed her father when O'Connor was just 15. After the diagnosis, O'Connor and her mother moved to Andalusia, the family farm north of Milledgeville, Georgia.

O’Connor despised romantic portrayals of the South

1939’s “Gone With the Wind” presented a rosy image of the Old South, something a 14-year-old O’Connor allegedly despised. Later, she wrote “A Late Encounter With the Enemy,” a story mocking how Confederate Army veterans were honored at the film’s premiere.

Flannery O’Connor believed the South was ‘Christ-haunted’

O’Connor was a lifelong Catholic who spent most of her life in the Protestant Bible Belt, the setting for nearly all her fiction often infused with Catholic themes. “I think it is safe to say that while the South is hardly Christ-centered, it is most certainly Christ-haunted,” she wrote.

Flannery O’Connor’s recommended reading

O’Connor was a rabid reader and a prolific letter writer, often suggesting (and sometimes criticizing) books to friends and admirers. This list distills those recommendations into a compact list, praising Henry James, Edgar Allan Poe, and National Geographic. It’s a good reading list and a fascinating window into O’Connor’s influences.

American short story writer Flannery O'Connor raised 40 peacocks, which became potent symbols for her fiction's elegant violence

Bruce Springsteen's 'Nebraska' was influenced by writer Flannery O'Connor

Springsteen became obsessed with the "Southern gothic" writer when he began working on the songs for "Nebraska," inspired by O'Connor's tragic characters and grotesque imagery.

O'Connor raised 40 peacocks, which became symbols for her fiction

O'Connor was drawn to peacocks because of their dichotomy—people were drawn to the beauty of their feathers but turned off by the ugliness of their behavior. It was an apt symbol for her fiction and the birds featured prominently on several of her books' covers.

Joyce Carol Oates praised King's working-class characters

Joyce Carol Oates is a writer who, like Stephen King, has a massive body of work that moves between styles and genres. Unlike King, she was never derided by critics as being overly commercial. Introducing King at Princeton University in 1997 and 2016, she made the case for King as a serious American writer in the Gothic tradition of Edgar Allan Poe.

Joan Didion's Friendsgivings had famous guests and massive home-cooked meals

The influential writer enjoyed cooking for large groups, which included novelists Philip Roth, Edna O'Brien, and Nora Ephron.

A profile of Dickinson's ambiguous but close relationship with Susan Gilbert

Gilbert met Dickinson in 1850, and the two women quickly became very close, with Dickinson often pining for Gilbert in letters. In this essay, critic Maria Popova calls the relationship "beautiful, heartbreaking, unclassifiable," and details how it came to inspire Dickinson's writing, even after Gilbert married Dickinson's brother.

Georgia O’Keeffe and Frank Lloyd Wright were longtime friends

In the early 1930s, famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright invited Georgia O’Keeffe to become the master artist at the newly formed Taliesin Fellowship. O’Keeffe turned him down, but the letter sparked a decades-long friendship, rooted in their shared love for art and American landscapes, which continued until his death.

Exploring the life of Colleen Hoover, one of romance's most popular authors

The writer is one of the bestselling names in fiction, with her book sales in 2022 surpassing those of the Bible. This profile unpacks her fast rise to fame, including the story behind her first book, which began as a self-published e-book but quickly found its way onto the New York Times bestseller list.

Georgia O'Keeffe's flower paintings are often assumed to be sexual, though the artist claimed she was simply interested in highlighting the beauty of flowers that most people neglect

Ginsberg, Kerouac, and Burroughs were influenced by their classmate Lucien Carr

Much has been written about Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and William S. Burroughs’ time at Columbia University in the 1940s, but less attention has been paid to Lucien Carr, another student and one of the trio’s close friends, who murdered his childhood stalker.

Novelist Richard Wright joined the existentialists in Paris

The author of “Black Boy” and “Native Son” left the United States in 1946 to escape his home country’s racial inequality. In Paris, he explored existentialist ideas and spent time with Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre. “The Outsider,” a novel he wrote while living in France, embraced many of the philosophy’s central themes.

'For it would seem—her case proved it—that we write, not with the fingers, but with the whole person. The nerve which controls the pen winds itself about every fibre of our being, threads the heart, pierces the liver.'

- Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) in "Orlando: A Biography"

Read passages from Truth's autobiography, dictated because she was illiterate

Because Truth was illiterate, her memoir was dictated to and written by Olive Gilbert. Published in 1850, "The Narrative of Sojourner Truth" recounts her life in slavery, escape to freedom, and religious awakening.

Searching for 'The Great Gatsby' in Kentucky

F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic novel "The Great Gatsby" is usually associated with New York and its extremely wealthy enclaves, but this Atlas Obscura podcast tracks down another location Fitzgerald portrayed in the book: Louisville, Kentucky, the setting for Daisy and Tom Buchanan's wedding, as well as the place where Fitzgerald spent two miserable months during World War I.

How a sick George Orwell finished '1984'

The writer worked on the novel while living in a remote cottage in Scotland. While he was there, he was in a boating accident that sent him overboard, eventually leading to a fatal bout of tuberculosis. Orwell finished the novel (and massive revisions) while trying to recover. He died in 1950, at 46.

A researcher recently discovered an interview from 1967 between groundbreaking journalist Joan Didion and the Grateful Dead, years before the band became an institution.

At 18, Eleanor taught immigrant children in one of New York's poorest neighborhoods

After finishing school in London, Roosevelt returned to New York and volunteered at a settlement house on Rivington Street in the Lower East Side, working directly with immigrant families living in poverty.

Comedy legend Catherine O'Hara, star of 'Schitt's Creek' and 'Home Alone,' quit 'Saturday Night Live' after just one week to return to her old job.

A Yale student wrote a profound essay about the consulting industry's influence on elite college students that was published in a book of her writing after she died in a post-graduation car accident.

Famed poet TS Eliot rejected the manuscript for George Orwell's political fable 'Animal Farm,' writing that its criticism of authoritarianism was not 'the right point of view.'

Browse a detailed visual analysis of over 200,000 similes—comparisons that often use 'like' or 'as'—from popular fiction to see how frequently writers the same idiomatic expressions.

Existentialist writer Jean-Paul Sartre coined the famous phrase 'Hell is—other people' in his play 'No Exit'

Dorothy's famous entrance into Oz in 'The Wizard of Oz' relied on analog tricks, including a body double and sepia-toned paint, as much as it did on technology

The 19th-century painters of the Hudson River School were among the first American romantics, with portraits that displayed the natural beauty of the young country.

20,000 letters to the advice columnist 'Dear Abby' provide insight into prevailing sex, religion, and LGBTQ fears, anxieties, and concerns from the 1950s onward.

Salvador Dalí believed he was his own dead brother, who had died nine months before he was born

Explore a list of the 100 best novels of all time, compiled by some of the world's best living writers, including Salman Rushdie, Stephen King, and Jennifer Egan.

The Brothers Grimm were lawyers before they were storytellers, but became interested in fairy tales as they began investigating how rules and customs had been passed down through cultures.

One of the most famous portraits ever taken is 'Afghan Girl' (1984) by Steve McCurry, yet the subject Sharbat Gula went much of her life without being identified or benefitting from the image's success.

Legendary architect Frank Lloyd Wright designed the SC Johnson headquarters in Wisconsin, aiming to make a cathedral-like workplace

US intelligence allegedly pursued more than 600 schemes to assassinate Cuban revolutionary Fidel Castro.

English mathematician Ada Lovelace wrote the first computer algorithm a century before computers existed and hypothesized that computing devices would one day be able to compose music—foreseeing the generative AI systems of today.

Hookworm infection, though risky, may help fight certain autoimmune conditions by tamping down the immune system's inflammatory response.

An investigation suggests a Scottish island became awash in forever chemicals via seafoam and seaspray—raising questions about what that means for the safety of other coastal areas.

See how Budweiser's famous Clydesdales spend their days at Warm Springs Ranch, where roughly 70 to 80 of the beer brand's giant horses can be found at any given time.

Researchers believe the brain consolidates memories, processes emotions, and plans for the future during dream states

Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps is independent of Iran's regular army and is one of the most powerful and influential military-political organizations in the Middle East.

An initial public offering or 'IPO' is the process of a private company becoming public by putting shares of the company on the stock market for purchase.

The syncytiotrophoblast is the outer layer of the placenta and the largest human cell, spanning an area about twice that of a king-sized bedsheet.