In the summer of 2014, I traveled to the Deep South with two fellow faith writers. We northerners had embarked on this adventure to uncover the mystique behind a writer we admired, but who’d left many confused. Her stories, while brilliant, were unnerving to many.
A devout Catholic growing up in the Southern Bible Belt, Flannery O’Connor suffered from lupus, which had claimed her father when she was a teenager. Even as her notoriety was growing, the peacock-loving Flannery died in 1964 at 39.
Her stories often made the reader squirm because of their all-too-truthful depictions of human nature. Many describe her characters and their situations as “grotesque” and her writing as “Southern Gothic.”
Nevertheless, through the years, Flannery’s stories have been lauded by many, including college English professors. Her work has proven to be a significant contribution to American literature as a whole.
A year after our trip, a U.S. postage stamp was created in her honor as the 30th offering in the literary arts series. And in 2023, Ethan Hawke wrote and directed an American biographical drama about her, “Wildcat,” starring his daughter, Maya, as Flannery.
The film offers an interesting glimpse of the writer we’d come to know, but we three northern travelers offer our own spin on Flannery in a travel memoir we wrote together, “Finding Flannery,” which will launch next month by En Route Books & Media.
How does all this relate to Charlie Kirk? Flannery popped into my mind after Charlie’s assassination last month. Unlike Charlie, who boldly shared his views on college campuses, Flannery tended to hide behind her typewriter and, though no lightweight spiritually, she often shirked public speaking.
Where the two coincided, however, was in their desire to rouse a weary world. Flannery did this through fiction, despite some readers missing her points. Charlie was more “out there,” living in a different time, but some of his audience also apparently missed his points.
I find a merging of the two in something Flannery once said: “When you can assume that your audience holds the same beliefs you do, you can relax and use more normal means of talking to it. When you have to assume that it does not, then you have to make your vision apparent by shock — to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost-blind you draw large and startling figures.”
Flannery and Charlie were both Christians encountering a world sorely lacking grace. In order to awaken that world, they had to employ “large and startling figures.” Flannery did that through fiction, and Charlie through blunt, truthful discourse.
Both could be described as genius in their own ways, but with hearts that deeply desired to draw more souls to the light of Christ.
From each, I’ve been inspired to continue to be bold in proclaiming Christ. We get but one life to share the truth. May we be as courageous as Charlie and Flannery in our heartfelt appeals to this wounded world, so desperately needing God’s grace.
[For the sake of having a repository for my newspaper columns and articles, I reprint them here, with permission. The preceding ran in The Forum newspaper on Oct. 19 2025.]
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