Nick Flynn

Nick Flynn
Flynn at Lannan Poetry Series
Born	(1960-01-26) January 26, 1960 (age 57) Scituate, Massachusetts, U.S.
Occupation	Author, poet, playwright
Nationality	American
Notable works	The Reenactments (2013), Another Bullshit Night in Suck City (2004), Some Ether (2000), Blind Huber (2002)
Notable awards	PEN/Martha Albrand Award for the Art of the Memoir, Guggenheim Fellowship, Witter Bynner Fellowship, PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award for Poetry
Spouse	Lili Taylor (m. 2009)
Children	1
Website
www.nickflynn.org

Nick Flynn (born January 26, 1960) is an American writer, playwright, and poet. His most recent publication is The Reenactments, which chronicles Flynn's experience during the making of Being Flynn, a film based on his acclaimed 2004 memoir, Another Bullshit Night in Suck City. Flynn is also the author of three collections of poetry, including Some Ether, which won the inaugural PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award for Poetry in 1999, and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.

Nick Flynn was raised by his mother in Scituate, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston.

Flynn had no contact with his father throughout most of his childhood and adolescence as his parents separated when he was six months old. As a child, he was discouraged to follow a writing career because his father had identified himself as a writer to his mother when they first met. Flynn claimed a reason for his parents' separation was his father's “delusion of greatness and identifying it very directly with being an artist.” Flynn first became an electrician after graduating high school, owing to the stigma associated with being a writer. When he was 22 years old, his mother committed suicide, and Flynn left his childhood home soon after.

At 27, Flynn was unexpectedly reunited with his father at the Pine Street Inn, a homeless shelter in Boston, when his then-homeless father showed up as a 'guest.' He examined his relationship with his father, as well as the suicide of his mother, in Another Bullshit Night in Suck City. Flynn explored his decision to have a child in his second memoir,The Ticking Is The Bomb. Following its publication, he wrote a book of poetry,The Captain Asks for a Show of Hands, which continued on similar themes.The Reenactments is the final book in Flynn's trilogy of memoirs.

Flynn's initial focus was on poetry, and he held a fellowship at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts, before moving to New York to pursue his Master of Arts in Poetry at New York University. He was a member of Columbia University's Writing Project, in which he served as an educator and consultant in New York public schools. He currently teaches Creative Writing at the University of Houston.