WHAT:
The Flannery O’Connor Childhood Home, a nonprofit dedicated to preserving the legacy of one of the South’s greatest writers, invites you to Flannery O’Connor: Faith, Race, and Disability, a panel discussion focused on faith, race, and disability in Flannery O’Connor’s work and in the modern South. A reception will follow the discussion.
Panelists include:
- Angela Alaimo O’Donnell, a writer, poet, and professor at Fordham University in New York City where she teaches English, Creative Writing, and American Catholic Studies. She also serves as Associate Director of the Curran Center for American Catholic Studies. Her critical work includes the book Radical Ambivalence: Race in Flannery O’Connor (Fordham University Press, 2020), and she has also authored several volumes of poetry.
- Mark Bosco, a Jesuit priest and Georgetown University professor of literature who writes about the intersection of religion and literature. His areas of research and specialization are in the fields of 20th-Century American and British Literature, the Roman Catholic literary tradition, aesthetics, art, and the religious imagination. He is also the co-writer and co-director of the documentary Flannery: The Storied Life of the Writer from Georgia.
- Patricia West, a retired Savannah State University professor and author of many articles about teaching, American literature, and Flannery O’Connor. Her book, Still Water Words: Poems and Stories from Ancestral Places, is inspired by her Gullah-Geechee heritage. Her current project explores the lives of the Black farm workers at Andalusia thought to have inspired the creation of O’Connor’s African American characters.
WHERE: Beach Institute African American Cultural Center
502 E. Harris Street
Savannah, GA 31401
WHEN: Sunday, February 23, 2025
3 p.m.
MORE INFO: This event is free, open to all ages, and ADA accessible. Please register at https://fareharbor.com/embeds/book/flanneryoconnorhome/items/568582/calendar/2025/02/. This project is supported by Georgia Humanities, in partnership with the Georgia Department of Economic Development, through funding from the Georgia General Assembly.
ABOUT FLANNERY O’CONNOR:
Flannery O’Connor was born in Savannah, Georgia on March 25, 1925 and is the author of 31
short stories as well as the acclaimed novels Wise Blood and The Violent Bear It Away and numerous essays. Perhaps best known as a pioneering Southern gothic author who often wrote about morally flawed characters, O’Connor remains an important voice in American literature. She lived in Savannah until 1938 and drew inspiration from her childhood experiences in Georgia’s First City until her death from lupus in Milledgeville, Georgia on August 3, 1964. She received the National Book Award for Fiction posthumously in 1972 for The Complete Stories of Flannery O’Connor.
ABOUT THE FLANNERY O’CONNOR CHILDHOOD HOME:
The Flannery O’Connor Childhood Home, located at 207 E. Charlton Street in the heart of Savannah, Georgia, is dedicated to preserving the legacy of one of the South’s greatest writers. An established 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, the Flannery O’Connor Childhood Home has been meticulously restored to reflect the authentic period furnishings of a Depression-Era Savannah rowhouse and to offer insight into the years that O’Connor lived in Savannah, from 1925 to 1938. The Home proudly presents a series of free readings as well as other events throughout the year. For more information, please visit flanneryoconnorhome.org.
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