The Agitation of the Mind. AUSTIN KLEON is a writer who draws. FLANNERY O’CONNOR, CARTOONIST. UPDATE 7/8/2011: Fantagraphics is putting out a collection of O’Connor’s cartoons, and I’ve archived a lot more here. Few people know this, but Flannery O’Connor, one of my favorite writers, was also a cartoonist. She started out publishing cartoons in her high school and college newspapers, then tried to publish some in the New Yorker as a way to make money so that she could write her fiction. (That didn’t quite work out.) A few folks have noted that cartooning probably had some effect on writing her style: dig her grotesque caricatures and gift for combining the comic and the serious.
Here’s some more background from Georgia College’s Library Special Collections page for their Flannery O’Connor collection: Flannery O’Connor’s first published works were her cartoons published in the Peabody Palladium, the student newspaper at O’Connor’s high school. “I don’t enjoy looking at these old pictures either, but it doesn’t hurt my reputation for people to think I’m a lover of fine arts.”