弗兰纳里•奥康纳（1925-1964），美国南方文学代表人物，与麦卡勒斯齐名的美国天才女作家，美国国家图书奖六十年唯一最佳小说奖得主，被公认为是继福克纳之后美国南方最杰出的作家，在世界文坛中影响巨大。

奥康纳出生于美国佐治亚州，1945 年毕业于佐治亚州女子学院，原本打算成为一位职业政治漫画家的她，在获得了州立大学提供的研究生奖学金之后，进入了著名的依阿华大学作家培训班，从此也将事业的重心转向了文学作品的创作。1946年，奥康纳在《音调》杂志上发表了人生的第一个短篇小说——《天竺葵》，并因此获得了莱因哈特（Rinehart）奖学金，之后她的创作便一发不可收拾，在一年之内写下了《理发师》《野猫》《警察》《火鸡》《火车》等多部短篇小说，并于1948年开始创作被后世奉为经典的长篇小说——《智血》。1950年，因被确诊患上红斑狼疮，奥康纳只得回到家乡农场静养，一边饲养她最爱的孔雀，一边孜孜不倦地继续创作文学作品。39岁英年早逝时，奥康纳已创作了两篇长篇小说和三十一篇短篇小说，多次获得欧•亨利短篇小说奖。美国评论界称她的逝世是“自菲茨杰拉德去世以来美国文坛最重大的损失”。

奥康纳的主要作品有短篇小说集《好人难寻》《上升的一切必将汇合》，长篇小说《智血》《暴力夺取》，散文书信集《生存的习惯》。

This collection of nine short stories by Flannery O'Connor was published posthumously in 1965. The flawed characters of each story are fully revealed in apocalyptic moments of conflict and violence that are presented with comic detachment. The title story is a tragicomedy about social pride, racial bigotry, generational conflict, false liberalism, and filial dependence. The protagonist, Julian Chestny, is hypocritically disdainful of his mother's prejudices, but his smug selfishness is replaced with childish fear when she suffers a fatal stroke after being struck by a black woman she has insulted out of oblivious ignorance rather than malice. Similarly, ''The Comforts of Home'' is about an intellectual son with an Oedipus complex. Driven by the voice of his dead father, the son accidentally kills his sentimental mother in an attempt to murder a harlot. The other stories are ''A View of the Woods,'' ''Parker's Back,'' ''The Enduring Chill,'' ''Greenleaf,'' ''The Lame Shall Enter First,'' ''Revelation,'' and ''Judgment Day.''

Flannery O'Connor was working on Everything That Rises Must Converge at the time of her death. This collection is an exquisite legacy from a genius of the American short story, in which she scrutinizes territory familiar to her readers: race, faith, and morality. The stories encompass the comic and the tragic, the beautiful and the grotesque; each carries her highly individual stamp and could have been written by no one else.