Her stories and novels reveal a penetrating grasp of the human condition, an uncompromising moral vision, and craftsmanship of the highest order. Her posthumously-published letters, The Habit of Being, reveal a life that – in the face of sickness, suffering and death – was lived with both a deep, sophisticated faith and a remarkable grace. And in her essays, Mystery and Manners, O’Connor is a “hillbilly Thomist” with a keen critical mind and a fresh, coherent vision of her vocation as an artist and a Christian.

A Roman Catholic woman writing in and about the Protestant American South, she managed to balance a rational, unsentimental approach to art and faith with a respectful appreciation of the mystery at the heart of each, in a way that offers a model for what can be accomplished when reason, artistry and faith come together in a single writer.

The goal of this international conference on Reason, Fiction and Faith is to analyze and appreciate this remarkable convergence and the art that it can produce.

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