Birthday: “Anything that comes out of the South is going to be called grotesque by the northern reader, unless it is grotesque, in which case it is going to be called realistic."

It's the 91st birthday of Georgia author Flannery O'Connor. She described herself as a "pigeon-toed child with a receding chin and a you-leave-me-alone-or-I'll-bite-you complex."When she was six, living at a home still standing, she experienced her first brush with celebrity status. The Pathé News people filmed "Little Mary O'Connor" with her trained chicken,and showed the film around the country. She said, "When I was six I had a chicken that walked backward and was in the Pathé News. I was in it too with the chicken. I was just there to assist the chicken but it was the high point in my life. Everything since has been an anticlimax."

A Catholic in rural Georgia, a semi-invalid the last fourteen years of her short life, she produced only two novels and 32 short stories, and is reckoned one of America's great 20th century writers. A graduate of the Iowa Writers Program, she said: "Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best-seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher."

Here's a good article on aspects of her life and writing.