Hazel Elizabeth Hester (June 1, 1923 – December 26, 1998) [1] was an American correspondent of influential twentieth-century writers, including Flannery O'Connor and Iris Murdoch. [2] Hester wrote several short stories, poems, diaries, and philosophical essays, none of which were published. [3]
Hester was born in Rome, Georgia, and attended Young Harris College. [2] She lived and worked in Atlanta before joining the U.S. Air Force in 1948. [4] After five years in the service she had risen to the rank of technical sergeant [4] and was stationed in Wiesbaden, Germany after World War II ( c. 1948–53). [5] She was discharged as "undesirable" for being a lesbian. [4] After her discharge from the Air Force, [6] she returned to Georgia. [5] Hester spent most of her life in a small Midtown Atlanta apartment. [3] She worked for Atlanta-based Retail Credit Company ( Equifax), commuting every day by bus. [2] [5] She struggled with alcoholism and bouts of depression [4] but kept her sexual orientation a secret except to her closest friends. [5]
Hester is best known for her nine-year correspondence and friendship with Southern fiction writer Flannery O'Connor. [6] From 1955 to 1964, Hester and O'Connor exchanged nearly 300 letters, some of which are published in Sally Fitzgerald's 1979 compilation of O'Connor's correspondence, The Habit of Being. [3] Hester, a very private and reclusive woman, asked that her identity be kept secret in the published letters; thus, she appears as "A". [3] [7]
Hester first wrote to O'Connor in July 1955, [8] when O'Connor was working on her second novel, The Violent Bear it Away. [9] [3] Eager to exchange thoughts and ideas with someone of equal intellectual caliber, O'Connor wrote back, "I would like to know who this is who understands my stories." [8] O'Connor felt that she and Hester shared a spiritual kinship, [8] and O'Connor would later become Hester's confirmation sponsor in the Catholic Church. [10] Hester left the Church in 1961 [11] and turned to agnosticism.[ citation needed] This news was a grave disappointment for O'Connor, [12] who had engaged Hester in theological dialogues and tried to sustain her friend's faith.[ citation needed]
Hester gave her letters to Emory University in 1987 on the condition that they be sealed for twenty years. [3] They were released to the public on May 12, 2007. [2]
Like her mother, Hester died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound on December 26, 1998, in Atlanta, at the age of 75. [5]