Flannery O'Connor

This recently discovered prayer journal, written from 1946 to 1947 when O'Connor was a student at the Iowa Writer's Workshop, is an extraordinary portal into the interior life of a great writer. Not only does it reveal a deep yearning for God and for literary achievement, but it lays bare her intense imagination. 96 pages, hardcover. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Flannery O'Connor discovered initimations of divinity not in the lives of saints, but in wickedly funny tales of human misfits who, through peculiar and often violent turns of events, run up against the limits of worldly wisdom. Her complete works are presented here for the first time in a single volume. Included are two novels, Wise Blood and The Violent Bear It Away; her short story collections, A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Everything That Rises Must Converge; and nine additional stories, selected essays, and 259 witty, spirited, and revealing letters, several never before published.

Winner of the National Book Award

The publication of this extraordinary volume firmly established Flannery O'Connor's monumental contribution to American fiction. There are thirty-one stories here in all, including twelve that do not appear in the only two story collections O'Connor put together in her short lifetime--Everything That Rises Must Converge and A Good Man Is Hard to Find.

O'Connor published her first story, "The Geranium," in 1946, while she was working on her master's degree at the University of Iowa. Arranged chronologically, this collection shows that her last story, "Judgement Day"--sent to her publisher shortly before her death--is a brilliantly rewritten and transfigured version of "The Geranium." Taken together, these stories reveal a lively, penetrating talent that has given us some of the most powerful and disturbing fiction of the twentieth century. Also included is an introduction by O'Connor's longtime editor and friend, Robert Giroux.

(PUBOrbis)Using brutal irony and humor, O'Connor wrote of society's outcasts: the deformed, freaks, and Baptist healers. To the hard of hearing you must shout and for the almost blind you must draw large and startling figures. Well-chosen excerpts from her fiction and collected letters. 160 pages, softcover.