Flannery 101: Capping the Centenary Year of an American Master
Flannery O'Connor
March 25, 2026
2–9pm
Information Commons 4th Floor, Lake Shore Campus
March 25th, 2026 marks 101 years since the birth of acclaimed author, Flannery O’Connor. Though she only published two novels and two collections of short fiction in her life, O’Connor continues to compel and inspire scholars of literature, devotees of the short story, theologians, visual artists and a cast of others. A post-war author, a southerner, a woman, a Catholic writer, a contrarian, she’s been identified and grouped in a number of ways, but she always seems to transcend simple reductions. This gatheriing will have as its focus the ways that "art responds to art" and will take up the terrain of childhood and the art of teaching O'Connor as robust subthemes. Join us for a celebration of an artist who put her storytelling first, who embraced discomfort in the pursuit of truth, and who knew that "anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days."
Featured speakers--and performers--for this event include Amy Alznauer, Fr. Mark Bosco, SJ., Angela Alaimo O' Donnell, Elizabeth Coffman, Colin Cutler, Claudia Zoe Bedrick, Ping Zhu, Nick Coffman-Price, and Hank Center Director, Michael P. Murphy.
To see the full program, and to register see below. This event is free; registration is highly encouraged but not required.
This in-person event is free and open to the public.
Schedule
12pm: Mass, MDS Chapel (optional)
12:30-2pm: Lunch (on your own)
2-3:15pm: Session One, "Flannery 101: Teaching Flannery O'Connor Today"
3:15pm: Break
3:30-4:45pm: Session Two, "Art Responding to Art: Demonstrations in Cinema, Gaming, and Music"
4:45pm: Break
5:00-6:20pm: Session 3 "Art Responding to Art: Flannery as Muse"
6:20-7:30pm: Hosted Drinks and Heavy hors d'oeuvres
7:30-8:45pm: Session Four, "Strange Birds: on Writing, Painting, and Publishing a Picture Book about Flannery (and other questions of art, collaboration, and childhood)"
Speakers
Angela Alaimo O'Donnell
Angela Alaimo O'Donnell PhD is a professor, poet, and scholar at Fordham University in New York City and serves as Associate Director of Fordham's Curran Center for American Catholic Studies. O'Donnell's areas of interest are American Catholic writers (with special emphasis on Flannery O'Connor), contemporary poetry and literature, women's poetry, and religion and literature. She is founding editor of the series published in partnership with Fordham University Press, Studies in the Catholic Imagination: The Flannery O'Connor Trust Series. O'Donnell's biography of O'Connor, Flannery O'Connor: Fiction Fired by Faith won the Catholic Press Association for Best Biography in 2015. Her monograph Radical Ambivalence: Race in Flannery O'Connor is the first book-length study devoted to O'Connor and race. In addition to her scholarship, O'Donnell writes poetry and creative non-fiction. She has published 11 poetry collections, including Andalusian Hours, a collection of 101 sonnets that channel the voice of Flannery O'Connor. Her 12th collection, titled The View from Childhood: New & Selected Poems, will appear this spring. Her poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, the Best of the Web Award, the Christianity & Literature Book of the Year Award, and the Arlin G. Meyer Prize in Imaginative Writing. O'Donnell is a former columnist and current contributing writer at America magazine.
Amy Alznauer
Amy Alznauer is the recipient of the Annie Dillard Award for Creative Nonfiction and the Christopher Award. She is the author of several acclaimed children’s books, including The Strange Birds of Flannery O’Connor, a New York Times Best Children’s Book of 2020; The Boy Who Dreamed of Infinity, a Booklist Top Ten Biography; and The Five Sides of Marjorie Rice (Candlewick, 2025), which selected as a Best Book of the Year by Evanston, Chicago, and New York Public Libraries and just won the 2026 Mathical Award. A curator of the Emory University exhibition At the Crossroads and a mathematics instructor at Northwestern University, she is currently at work on two middle-grade novels under contract with Neal Porter Books. Learn more at www.amyalz.com
Claudia Zoe Bedrick
Claudia Zoe Bedrick is the publisher, editor, and art director of Enchanted Lion Books, an award-winning, independent publisher based in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. She graduated from Harvard/Radcliffe thirty-five years ago and spent a decade traveling around East & Central Europe and the countries of the former Soviet Union while attending graduate school classes in the history of philosophy. Her sense of hope is nourished every single day by the open minds and creativity of children everywhere.
Fr. Mark Bosco, S.J.
Fr. Mark Bosco, S.J., is Vice President of Mission and Ministry at Georgetown University. Fr. Bosco’s scholarship focuses on the intersection of theology and art—specifically, the British and American Catholic literary traditions. He has published on a number of authors, including Graham Greene, Flannery O’Connor, and theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar. He is the author or co-editor of five books and nearly twenty articles and book chapters. He has taught classes on a wide range of topics, including the Catholic Literary Tradition, Sacramental Theology, Theological Aesthetics, Art and Religious Imagination, and 20th Century American and British Literature. He is also co-producer and co-director of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) award-winning documentary film Flannery: The Storied Life of the Writer from Georgia. In 2019, the film became the first ever recipient of the Library of Congress Lavine/Ken Burns Prize for Film.
Elizabeth Coffman & Nicholas Coffman-Price
Elizabeth Coffman is a documentary filmmaker and film scholar. Her co-produced film with the Hank Center on Flannery O’Connor was broadcast on PBS’s American Masters (2021) and won the first Library of Congress Lavine/Ken Burns prize for film (2019). Nicholas Coffman-Price is a writer, tutor and game designer, finishing his MFA from DePaul University.
Colin Cutler
Colin Cutler is an instructor of English at Guilford Technical Community College, holding MAs in English and Creative Writing respectively from UNC Greensboro and York St. John University. In 2023, Cutler participated in the National Endowment for the Humanities Institute on Flannery O'Connor at Georgia College. There, he finished writing his Flannery O’Connor-inspired fourth studio album, Tarwater, which reached the top 20 on Folk and Alt Country charts, and which No Depression declared "one magnificent tapestry of roots music." He has since taken the music to the Universities of Notre Dame, Georgetown, and St Thomas-Houston, Ole Miss, the North Carolina Folk Festival, and back to Georgia for the centennial celebrations in Savannah and Milledgeville, with plenty of dive bars and BBQ joints in between.
Jessica Mesman
Michael P. Murphy
Michael P. Murphy is Director of Loyola’s Hank Center for the Catholic Intellectual Heritage. His research interests are in Theology and Literature, Systematic Theology, and the literary/political cultures of Catholicism—but he also thinks and writes about issues in eco-theology, social ethics, and new media ecologies. Mike's first book, A Theology of Criticism: Balthasar, Postmodernism, and the Catholic Imagination (Oxford), was named a "Distinguished Publication" by the American Academy of Religion. His most recent scholarly work includes “Tinderization and Transcendence: Girard, McLuhan, and the Apocalyptic Imagination" in Theological Discourses on Social Media (Routledge, 2025) and "Technologies of the Incarnation: Catholic Cosmotechnics and New Horizons for Liturgical Participation" in Catholic Cosmotechnics in the AI Age (forthcoming from St. Augustine's Press, spring, 2026). Mike's more occasional pieces have appeared in America, NCR, and First Things, among other venues.
Ping Zhu
Ping Zhu grew up in Los Angeles, where she studied illustration at ArtCenter College of Design. Working primarily in gouache on paper, she creates images that extend beyond editorial and print into film posters, murals, and animation. Her work has been recognized by American Illustration, Communication Arts, the Art Directors Club (Young Guns) and the Society of Illustrators. Her first illustrated children’s book, The Strange Birds of Flannery O’Connor, was named one of The New York Times Best Children’s Books of 2020. She currently lives in Brooklyn, where she continues the struggle against cold weather.