Are Honey Boo Boo and her family like something out of Flannery O'Connor? Perhaps they are. But so are those of us who gawk at them from the safety of our judgment seats. The central figure in O'Connor's fiction, as it turns out, is neither the freak nor the felon, but the Pharisee.

This summer, I found myself re-reading Alice Walker's The Color Purple, a book that is both wonderful and awful. After finishing, I asked myself, "Why do some books by great authors (or parts of books by great authors) work so well, while others fail?"

The River Witch tells a story of the deep South with all its mystery, strangeness and distinction. Its essence brings to mind memories of the stories of Flannery O'Connor and Carson McCullers.

By Emily Temple for Flavorwire: We tend to put our favorite authors on a pedestal, and in some ways when we do that, we turn them into characters t...

Flannery O'Connor's collected letters have been published in The Habit of Being. These letters are fascinating, and among other thing, include some interesting advice and observations about writing.

If you are new to the short story, if you think them above or beneath you, if you've never given them a second thought, think of this as an invitation to a genre that will certainly surprise you.

From Flavorwire: It's an old topic but it always manages to be interesting -- what did the authors we love do in order to write what they did? Beyo...

Flannery O'Connor is best remembered for her potent fictions, and to a lesser extent for her unfortunate life (she eked out the last decade and a half...

Esquire reposted a slide show of 75 books all men should read. The books are mostly fantastic and the headline phrasing didn't much bug us. After all,...

As a fitting finale to National Short Story Month, we asked the talented crew over at One Story to name their ten favorite epigrammatic tales. Tanya R...

Jezebel-writer Anna North’s debut novel, America Pacifica, is out today. The story centers around an impoverished teenage girl who is struggling to ...

It's been too long since we've shared with you the pulse of the people. It's a little segment we like to call Reading In Public! Here's how it works:...

A short story is like a toothache and you must drill it and fill it. A novel is more like bridgework.

When you find yourself agreeing with one of those Sunday morning talking heads, remember, it's like carnival food -- it tastes good, but it isn't good for you.

Sisters, let's be honest. We write books. But if you look at the fact that so many more works by men are reviewed in major journals, our "books" are not what the establishment deems noteworthy.

I thought McNally, because he has experienced the Iowa Writers' Workshop firsthand--and lived to tell the funniest tale ever written about it--would be an ideal subject to interview about a lot of concerns in the writing and publishing industries.

Ever since Sawyer was shown reading "Watership Down" in Season One of "Lost," an abundance of carefully placed works of literature have been featured...

These last two weeks seem to be all about books by non-writers and we felt it was time to change the conversation. We asked writers--colleagues and fr...