Mystery & Manners in Savannah – Savannah, Georgia

Location

Savannah, Georgia, with an excursion to Milledgeville

Dates

March 25–29 (4 nights)

Author

Flannery O’Connor: short stories and essays

Program Description

To read Flannery O’Connor’s fiction is to be amused, provoked, and pushed to reconsider ourselves and our place in the world. A Roman Catholic and a native of Georgia, O’Connor created stories that inimitably blend humour, horror, and the mysteries of faith. While her writing is richly specific, evoking the dusty back roads and quirky characters of the American South, it deals powerfully with universal questions: What does it mean to
be good? How should we live? What is the meaning of death? How can the divine penetrate the everyday world? In her essays, O’Connor delves deeply into the mystery of writing, why people do it, struggle over it and sacrifice so much of themselves for it.

Our base will be Savannah, O’Connor’s birthplace and childhood home. Here we will hold our discussions, visit the Flannery O’Connor Childhood Home Foundation and explore this beautiful antebellum city’s striking architecture, laid out around twenty-four squares. We will travel by private coach to Milledgeville, where we will be received at Andalusia, the O’Connor family farm, by a close personal friend of hers and where we will watch a movie of her short story, “The Displaced Person.”

Discussion Leader

Nancy Carr was a senior editor at the Great Books Foundation in Chicago and is now engaged in freelance writing and teaching. Nancy is fascinated with O’Connor’s stories, how deceptively ordinary situations play over and over in our minds.

Accommodation

The Marshall House, 4 nights

Fees

$1,830 Cdn
$500 Cdn – single supplement

$1,650 U.S.
$450 U.S. – single supplement

Fees include

books
accommodation
two meals a day
daily discussion
walking tours
talks
excursion
admissions