Flannery O'Connor

O'Connor was diagnosed with lupus, the same autoimmune disease that had killed her father, and she lived with the condition for over a decade at her family's farm, Andalusia, in Milledgeville, Georgia. She died from complications of the disease in 1964 at the age of 39.

"A Good Man Is Hard to Find," the title story of her 1955 collection, is perhaps her most widely read and anthologized work. It follows a family road trip that ends in a violent encounter with an escaped convict known as The Misfit.

O'Connor wrote two novels: "Wise Blood" (1952), about a young man who returns from the army and attempts to establish a Church Without Christ, and "The Violent Bear It Away" (1960), about a boy's struggle with a religious calling. "Wise Blood" was later adapted into a 1979 film directed by John Huston.

O'Connor kept dozens of peafowl at her farm Andalusia, partly out of personal fascination and partly because she found them thematically resonant with her writing's concern with the grotesque and the sublime. She wrote about her birds in the essay collection "Mystery and Manners" and they became a symbol associated with her legacy.