Flannery O’Connor is a writer who defies easy categorization. Her novels and short stories often grapple with the complex intertwining of religious faith and human nature, viewed with her sharp eye for the humorous and the grotesque in everyday life. As an author who has been beloved and dismissed in equal measure since she first began publishing in the 1950s, O’Connor’s reputation seems eternally in flux amongst critics and ordinary readers alike. Who was Flannery O’Connor, and why does her wor