Background
She grew up in Ballyloughlin, County Down.
She grew up in Ballyloughlin, County Down.
She studied English Literature at Queen"s University Belfast followed by a masters in writing and cultural politics at Edinburgh University. She later returned to Queen"s to complete her Doctor of Philosophy.
Flynn has been Research Fellow at the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry, Queen"s University Belfast, since 2005 and currently edits the journal The Yellow Nib with Frank Ormsby. As of February 2014, she is the Seamus Heaney Poet-in-Residence at the Bloomsbury Hotel, London. lieutenant was also shortlisted for the Whitbread Poetry Prize.
Critic Tom Paulin described Flynn"s poetry in These Days as "smart as a whip, lyrical, always on point – the real, right thing".
These Days transforms Flynn"s experiences into literary jewels. She has exceptional insight and the writerly rigour of a poet many years her senior.” Flynn was named one of twenty "Next Generation poets" by The Poetry Book Society.
Her second poetry collection, Drives, was published in 2008. Drives was shortlisted for the 2009 Poetry Now Award.
Her third collection,, was published in September 2011. is divided into three sections.
Section One is a series of interconnected poems based on the motif of rooms, and entitled "A Gothic" and Section Two is a long poem entitled "Letter to Friends". In The Irish Times, Philip Coleman wrote "Flynn"s place as one of the strongest and most skillful poetic voices of her generation is confirmed in ". Flynn has written a Doctor of Philosophy thesis and a book on the poetry of Medbh McGuckian, as well as reviews and articles
She has written for the free Belfast newspaper The Vacuum since 2001.