Nick Flynn

Nick Flynn (born 1960) is an American poet, playwright, and prose writer.

Life
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. He used to teach at Columbia University, where he was a poet and educator. His long-time partner is actress Lili Taylor, with whom he shares a home in New York.

His most recent publication is a play, Alice Invents a Little Game and Alice Always Wins. Previous books include a memoir, Another Bullshit Night in Suck City, and two collections of poetry: Blind Huber, and Some Ether

Recognition
Flynn's works have inspired the movie Being Flynn. Flynn's works have appeared in New American Poets: A Bread Loaf Anthology, American Poetry: The Next Generation, The New Yorker, The Nation, Fence, The New York Times, and The Paris Review.

Awards

 * Some Ether won the inaugural PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.
 * 2001 Guggenheim Fellowship
 * 2001 Witter Bynner Fellowship
 * 2001 Amy Lowell Poetry Travelling Scholarship
 * 1999 Discovery/The Nation Award for his poem, Bag of Mice, about his mother's suicide.
 * 1999 PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award
 * 1999 Larry Levis Prize (Virginia Commonwealth University)

Poetry collections

 * Some Ether: Poems (Graywolf Press, 2000)
 * Blind Huber: Poems (Graywolf Press, 2002)
 * The Captain Asks for a Show of Hands (Graywolf Press, 2011)

Memoir

 * Another Bullshit Night in Suck City : A Memoir (W. W. Norton & Company, 2004)
 * The Ticking Is the Bomb: A Memoir (W.W. Norton, 2010)

Textbooks

 * A Note Slipped Under the Door: Teaching from Poems We Love (Stenhouse Publishers, 2000, co-authored with Shirley McPhillips)

Plays

 * Alice Invents a Little Game and Alice Always Wins: A Play (Faber & Faber, 2008)

Miscellaneous

 * Crossroads (2001), with Josh Neufeld