A Revelation of Grief and Wonder

Amy Alznauer is a polymath: she is a writer, arts collaborator, and an instructor of calculus and number theory at Northwestern University. Amy and Elise’s conversation touches on all of these things. Amy tells us about why she started writing picture-book biographies and what the genius of childhood can teach grown-up readers. She and Elise dive into Flannery O’Connor’s unpublished early novel, the grief that motivated O’Connor’s writing, and the recent controversy surrounding a New Yorker piece on O’Connor and racism. They wrap up the conversation by investigating what makes infinity simultaneously compelling and terrifying and the relationship between math and love.

Publishing in a pandemic

The work of imagination in biography writing

Reinvestigating childhood books

Grief, staring, and the grotesque in the work of Flannery O’Connor

Flannery O’Connor and racism

The difference between moral vision and piety

Thinking about the infinite

Mathematics and love

Links:

Betsy Bird Blog

Me...Jane by Patrick McDonnell

The Strange Birds of Flannery O’Connor by Amy Alznauer

The Boy Who Dreamed of Infinity by Amy Alznauer

The Zhou Brothers: A Story of Revolution and Art by Amy Alznauer

Srinivasa Ramanujan

Mystery and Manners by Flannery O’Connor (includes the essay “The King of the Birds”)

“On Flannery O’Connor and Race: A Response to Paul Elie” by Amy Alznauer

“How Racist Was Flannery O’Connor?” by Paul Elie

“This Lonesome Place” by Hilton Als

“A South Without Myths” by Alice Walker

Benny Andrews illustrations and afterword for “Everything That Rises Must Converge”

Benny Andrews website

"The Site of Memory," essay by Toni Morrison, anthologized in The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations

Radical Ambivalence by Angela Alaimo O’Donnell