Episode 157: Jessica Hooten Wilson

In this episode, Jessica Hooten Wilson and I go deep in her ten year project of reckoning with Flannery O’Connor’s unpublished and unfinished 3rd novel Why Do the Heathen Rage? Jessica shares insights into Flannery’s writing process, themes in her fiction, her perspectives on race and social justice. She talks about reading O’Connor with charity and how that can provide new insights. We get into limitations because of Flannery’s illness that contributed to the depth and particularity of her writing. We also talk grace, sanctity and the connection between body and soul. So join us as we dig deep into the works of Flannery O’Connor.

Jessica Hooten Wilson is the Fletcher Jones Endowed Chair of Great Books at Pepperdine University and formerly Louise Cowan Scholar in Residence at the University of Dallas. She is the author of several books, most recently Reading for the Love of God. Her book Giving the Devil his Due: Flannery O’Connor and The Brothers Karamazov received a 2018 Christianity Today book of the year in arts and culture award and The Scandal of Holiness received a 2022 Award of Merit. In 2019 she received the Hiett Prize for Humanities from the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture. Other awards include a Fulbright Fellowship to Prague, an NEH to study Dante in Florence, a Biola University sabbatical fellowship funded by the John Templeton Foundation, and the 2017 Emerging Public Intellectual Award. She is a Senior Fellow at The Trinity Forum.

Jessica's Book:
Flannery O'Connor's Why Do the Heathen Rage?