Saint Martin's Colloquium Nov. 30 Draws From the Works of Flannery O'Connor

Nov. 18, 2004

Lacey – Georgia-born writer Flannery O’Connor, who died in 1964, is famous for her short stories – stories in which dark violence and tragedy rub shoulders with faith and comedy. Her life was cut short by disease at 39, but her stories, essays and novels of the deep South and its spiritual and racial underpinnings remain powerful today. At the Saint Martin’s College Fall Colloquium, Nov. 30, Seattle Pacific University faculty member Todd Rendleman will perform excerpts from several of her short stories and her two novels during this exploration of how O’Connor revealed grace in the lives of her characters.

Rendleman’s dramatic presentation, “The Action of Mercy: A Flannery O’Connor Performance Hour,” is a presentation of the Society of Fellows, the college’s honor society through the Inquiring Mind Series of Humanities Washington. The colloquium will be at 7 p.m. at the college’s Worthington Conference Center, 5300 Pacific Ave. SE. Admission is free and the public is invited.

Rendleman is an assistant professor of communication at Seattle Pacific and a researcher on the power and effects of religious images in American popular culture. He teaches courses in communication studies, the art of film and the performance of fiction, which he sees as an important means of relating literature to life. He specializes in performing the works on Southern women writers such as O’Connor and Eudora Welty.

For more information:
Norma Shelan, community services professor
Society of Fellows
360-438-4358

Deanna Partlow
Office of Communication
360-438-4541; dpartlow@stmartin.edu