Born in Park River, North Dakota, Roland Flint (1934-2001) attended the University of North Dakota before joining the United States Marine Corps. He served in post-war Korea and then returned to and graduated from the University of North Dakota. He earned an M.A. in English from Marquette University and a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota, where he wrote his dissertation on the early work of Theodore Roethke, and began to publish his poetry. At the University of Minnesota he began a long friendship with Garrison Keillor.
He was a professor of English at Georgetown University from 1968-1997, and received several university awards for his teaching. Flint had a phenomenal memory for poetry, and could recite thousands of poems he knew "by heart." He was Poet Laureate of Maryland from 1995-2000, when he resigned due to poor health. He died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 66. His papers are held at the University of Maryland.
