Poet and memoirist Nick Flynn was born in Scituate, Massachusetts. His debut poetry collection, Some Ether (2000), won the PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award, for which the judges’ statement read: “These poems establish their emotional authority through their very movement—their wayward, whispering music. At once reckless and demure, outrageous and delicate. . . .” Most of the poems in Some Ether focus on Flynn’s tumultuous family life and include a detached yet affecting look at childhood and trauma. Having written about his family in both poetry and prose, Flynn has said, “The way I write I don’t see much distinction between the two, although prose seems more suited to daylight, and poetry to night. I try to cook both down to something essential—by the end hopefully some balance between mystery and clarity remains.”
Flynn is also the author of the books of poetry Blind Huber (2002), The Captain Asks for a Show of Hands (2011), and My Feelings (2015). He has also written several memoirs, including Another Bullshit Night in Suck City (2004), Being Flynn (2005), The Ticking is the Bomb (2010), and The Reenactments (2013); and the play Alice Invents a Little Game and Alice Always Wins (2008). His book The Ticking Is the Bomb: A Memoir of Bewilderment (2010) addresses the Abu Ghraib scandal.
Flynn teaches creative writing at the University of Houston, and splits his time between Houston and Brooklyn, New York.
Portrait by Ryan McGinley
