All,

Spring has sprung and this month we have more exciting programming lined up. Last month, we celebrated both Flannery’s 99th birthday and our official name change to the Flannery O’Connor Institute for the Humanities.

This month, we have an amazing program featuring Dr. Rosemary Magee, who served as the Director of the Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives and Rare Book Library in the Woodruff Library at Emory University, as well as noted playwright Karin Coonrod, who has adapted O’Connor’s work for the stage.

In addition, we will be showcasing some of the work from the scholars who attended the National Endowment for the Humanities summer institute. We will also resume our monthly book club.

Finally, we were recently able to hire Ms. Lani Daniel, who will be serving as project coordinator for our National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) grant on oral history. As you can tell from the newsletter, we have stayed very busy this spring!

Jordan Cofer, Interim Executive Director for the Flannery O’Connor Institute for the Humanities

The NEH Oral History project "Flannery O'Connor and Milledgeville: Collecting the Past" has been working on interviewing community members who lived in Milledgeville during the heart of Flannery O’Connor’s writing career (1951-1964) to provide important insights on life in rural Georgia.

Our goals are to expand the existing historical narrative of Milledgeville by documenting unwritten life stories of community members and to create an archive for public access. The project has gathered information regarding experiences with class, gender, race, disability, the Cold War, religious beliefs, commercialism, and old/new South mythologies in 1950s rural Georgia.

Georgia College students have been conducting interviews in the spring 2024 semester and have been looking forward to sharing them with the community. “Flannery O'Connor and Milledgeville: Collecting the Past" plans to share the work collected so far at a celebration April 24th that will be open to the public. Refreshments will be provided.

For more information regarding "Flannery O'Connor and Milledgeville: Collecting the Past" and upcoming events, please email lani.daniel@gcsu.edu

Lani Daniel, Flannery O'Connor and Milledgeville: Collecting the Past project coordinator

Writing for Success will lead two nature-walk writing workshops during the 10th annual ArtHealthy Festival on the GCSU campus! Meet us at booth 139 at 11:00 a.m. and 1:00 p.m. to embark on a short journey around campus where we will stop to write about what we observe. This is an all-ages activity and materials will be provided. Stop by our booth any time for writing activities and information about ongoing Flannery O'Connor Institute programs.

April is the last month for writing and podcasting workshops! Join us at the following times and locations:

• Allen's Market, Monday & Wednesday 4:00-5:15 p.m.
• Mary Vinson Memorial Library children's theater, Tuesday & Thursday 4:00-5:15 p.m. and 5:30-6:45 p.m.
• Mary Vinson Memorial Library local history room, Saturday 12:00-2:00 p.m.

Parents/guardians should attend workshops with students. Registration is free and materials are provided!

Please reach out with any questions at 478-445-0816 or jessica.mcquain@gcsu.edu

Jessica McQuain, Writing for Success project coordinator

Featuring storytelling by local 5th-grade students as well as interviews with authors like Mary Carpenter, Chika Unigwe, Kerry James Evans, Laura Newbern, Kerry Beth Neville, and more!

April 18, from 7 to 8 p.m., the Flannery O'Connor Institute for the Humanities will host a Zoom presenting three veterans of the 2023 NEH Summer Institute at Georgia College, "Reconsidering Flannery O'Connor," as they lead a discussion on "Flannery O'Connor and Race."

Please contact Tammie Burke at tammie.burke@gcsu.edu to get the link for the Zoom.

William Gonch is an assistant professor of literature and director of the literature program at Ave Maria University. A scholar of 20th- and 21st-century American literature, he conducts research on the creative exchange - the "translation" - between secular and religious styles and modes of imagination. He holds a Ph.D. in Literature from the University of Maryland and has served as the Cornerstone Fellow in English at The Catholic University of America.

Matt Bryant Cheney is assistant director for Faculty Development, Community Engagement, and Research at the University of Tennessee’s Judith Anderson Herbert Writing Center. He holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of Kentucky. His scholarship and teaching focus on Community-Engaged Pedagogy, 20th Century US Literature, Southern & Appalachian Literatures, and most recently, the rise of Artificial Intelligence in writing classrooms. President of the Flannery O’Connor Society since 2021, Cheney has published on O’Connor in The Georgia Review and The Routledge Companion to Literature of the U.S. South, and he has work forthcoming in the Flannery O’Connor Review. With Anthony Szczesiul, Cheney is co-editor of Reckoning with Racism and Flannery O’Connor, currently accepting proposals through July 2024 with the University of Georgia Press having agreed to review for publication.

William Murray is an assistant professor of English at Tennessee Wesleyan University. His research and published work focus on questions of race and region in post-1960s American literature, film, and television. Examples of Murray’s work can be found in American Studies, Mississippi Quarterly, and the Eudora Welty Review. His book Dangerous Innocence: White Men, Mass Culture, and the Southern Outsider’s Appeal:1960-2020 is out this spring from LSU Press.

As emcee for the evening, Dr. Gentry will do the introductions and then ask each speaker to talk for about 10 minutes. Then we'll have time for questions.

This conference on Flannery O'Connor's life and works, sponsored by the Andalusia Institute at Georgia College, by the Flannery O'Connor Review, and by Andalusia Farm: the Home of Flannery O'Connor, will be held September 12-15 on the Georgia College campus in Milledgeville. Our conference is part of the world-wide celebration of Flannery O'Connor's centennial.

Speaking slots are limited. Send your paper proposal of 100-200 words, on any aspect of O'Connor's life and works, to Marshall Bruce Gentry at bruce.gentry@gcsu.edu by May 15, 2024. The conference program will be finalized and announced by July, 1 2024.

Be on the lookout for updates about our conference planning by visiting the website of the Flannery O'Connor Institute. Please feel free to share the announcement by saving the poster below and sharing with your networks.

Conference Organizing Committee:

• Marshall Bruce Gentry, English Dept., Georgia College (Committee Chair)
• Jordan Cofer, FOIH, Georgia College
• Matt Davis, Andalusia: the Home of Flannery O'Connor, Georgia College
• Robert Donahoo, English Dept, Sam Houston State University
• Kerry Neville, Creative Writing, Georgia College
• Katie Simon, English Dept, Georgia College

Because of the generous financial support from NEH, we will not charge a fee for registration. This conference has been made possible by a major grant (EH-288088-22) from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

We need workers and volunteers to help with "Flannery O'Connor's Second Century: Looking Forward, Looking Back," the conference we will be hosting at Georgia College from Sept. 12 to Sept. 15, 2024.

We need help with such things as running the conference check-in table, escorting speakers, helping with technology in meeting rooms, and providing transportation. To apply for a job as a GCSU student worker, go to GCSUJobs and look for position no. 269308. To apply for a casual labor position (for those not currently enrolled at GCSU), look for position 269326. Questions and resumes may be sent to Bruce Gentry at bruce.gentry@gcsu.edu.

Thursday, Apr. 25, 2024, the Flannery O'Connor Book Club will meet to discuss the letters O'Connor wrote in 1963-64 (pp. 503-96 in The Habit of Being). This will conclude our discussion of O'Connor's letters. Our in-person meeting will be held at the Georgia Writers Museum on the square in Eatonton from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m. Come early to purchase coffee and pastry!

A Zoom meeting on the same batch of letters will also be held from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Apr. 25. Contact Tammie Burke at tammie.burke@gcsu.edu if you prefer to sign up for the Zoom.

We'll resume our Flannery O'Connor Book Club meetings in the fall. Feel free to send suggestions about what we might read and discuss.

Bruce Gentry, Andalusia Institute fellow