sentences:  This character is based on Fannie Flagg's real life Aunt Bess, who ran the Irondale Cafe in Irondale, Alabama.She is the basis for the character of Idgie in "Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe".Attending the Santa Barbara Writer's Conference in 1978 to see her idol, Eudora Welty, Flagg won first prize in the writing contest for a short story told from the perspective of an 11-year-old girl, spelling mistakes and all—a literary device that she figured was ingenious because it disguised her own pitiful spelling, later determined to be an outgrowth of dyslexia.