Betty Hester

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Betty Hester, born Hazel Elizabeth Hester on June 1, 1923, in Rome, Georgia, was an American correspondent who wrote about influential twentieth‑century writers, including Flannery O’Connor and Iris Murdoch. She also wrote stories, poems, diaries, and philosophical essays, though none were published.

She grew up in Georgia, attended Young Harris College, and lived in Atlanta. In 1948 she joined the U.S. Air Force, rising to technical sergeant and serving in Wiesbaden, Germany after World War II. She was discharged as “undesirable” for being a lesbian.

Back in Georgia, she lived in a small Midtown Atlanta apartment and worked for an Atlanta credit company, Equifax, commuting by bus. She struggled with alcoholism and depression and kept her sexual orientation private.

Betty Hester is best known for her nine‑year friendship with the Southern writer Flannery O’Connor. From 1955 to 1964 they exchanged nearly 300 letters. Some were published in The Habit of Being (1979). To protect her privacy, Hester asked to be identified as “A” in the published letters. O’Connor felt a deep spiritual kinship with her and later sponsored her in the Catholic Church.

Hester left the Catholic Church in 1961 and became agnostic. In 1987 she gave her letters to Emory University to be sealed for twenty years; they were opened to the public in 2007.

Betty Hester died by a self‑inflicted gunshot wound on December 26, 1998, in Atlanta, at the age of 75.