The current issue of NRODT features a major essay by Ralph Wood on Flannery O’Connor (subscribe already!) — and today on NRO, we’ve posted my podcast interview with Brad Gooch, author of a new biography of O’Connor (which is partly the subject of Wood’s attention).

O’Connor once wrote: “There won’t be any biographies of me because, for only one reason, lives spent between the house and the chicken yard do not make exciting copy.” I ask Gooch about this line, as well as why O’Connor’s reputation has grown since her death and where readers who haven’t tried her yet should begin. Also, did you know that Conan O’Brien wrote his Harvard senior thesis on her?