Biography Nick Flynn

Poet Biography

Nick Flynn (born 1960) is an American writer, playwright, and poet. His most recent publication is a play, Alice Invents a Little Game and Alice Always Wins (Faber & Faber, 2008). His most recent book is a memoir, Another Bullshit Night in Suck City, (W.W. Norton, 2004). He has published two collections of poetry: Blind Huber, and Some Ether, which won the inaugural PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Further honors include a 2001 Guggenheim Fellowship, a 2001 Amy Lowell Poetry Travelling Scholarship, and the 1999 Discovery/The Nation Award for his poem, Bag of Mice, about his mother's suicide.

Flynn's works have appeared in The New Yorker, The Nation, Fence, The New York Times, and The Paris Review. He was born and grew up in Scituate, Massachusetts, south of Boston. His parents divorced when he was young and his mother committed suicide when he was 22. He drifted through several jobs before starting work at a homeless shelter in Boston, where at age twenty-seven, he met his estranged, homeless father for the first time. Flynn earned an Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from New York University, and teaches part-time at The University of Houston Creative Writing Program. His long-time partner is actress Lili Taylor, with whom he shares a home in New York.