Attend Book Talk by Jessica Hooten Wilson

On Friday, April 19, 2024, from noon to 1 PM in the Payson Library, Pepperdine Libraries will host a talk by Jessica Hooten Wilson, the Fletcher Jones Endowed Chair of Great Books, who will discuss her recently published book, Flannery O'Connor's Why Do the Heathen Rage?: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at a Work in Progress.

Celebrated American novelist and short story writer, Flannery O’Connor died at the age of 39 in 1964, leaving behind an unfinished third novel titled Why Do the Heathen Rage?, which scholarly experts deemed unpublishable. For more than a decade, Wilson explored the novel's 378 pages of typed and handwritten material and compiled everything to provide a glimpse into what O'Connor might have planned to publish. She introduces O'Connor's novel to the public for the first time and imagines themes and directions O'Connor's work might have taken.