Leontia Flynn facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Leontia Flynn
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|---|---|
| Born | 1974 (age 49–50) |
| Alma mater | Queen's University Belfast |
| Occupation | Professor; poet |
| Scientific career | |
| Institutions | Queen's University Belfast |
| Thesis | Reading Medbh McGuckian. (2004) |
Leontia Flynn (born December 1974) is a poet and writer from Northern Ireland.
Life and work
Leontia Flynn was born in Downpatrick, Co Down and grew up between Dundrum and Newcastle, Co Down. She attended Assumption Grammar School, Ballynahinch and afterwards began an English degree at Trinity College Dublin before dropping out. She completed a degree and later a PhD in English at Queen's University Belfast, and an MSc in writing and cultural politics at Edinburgh University. She is a professor at Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen's University where she has worked since 2005.
Themes and influences
Flynn has written about as family and psychological inheritance, as well as about her father's Alzheimer's disease. Her poems also sometimes address technology. She has described the sonnets in Drives as ‘wikipedia poems’. Profit and Loss contains a poem about a floppy disk, and ‘Letter to Friends’ contains lines about the rise of social media:
Prizes
These Days won an Eric Gregory Award in manuscript in 2001, the Forward Prize for Best first collection in 2004 and was shortlisted for the Costa Prize.
In the same year Flynn was named one of twenty ‘Next Generation poets’ by the Poetry Book Society. Flynn received The Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, in 2008. Profit and Loss was Poetry Book Society choice for Autumn 2013 and shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize. Flynn won the Lawrence O’Shaughnessy Prize for Irish Literature in 2011, and the prestigious Ireland Fund's AWB Vincent Literary Award in 2014. The Radio was shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize and won the Irish Times's Poetry Now award. Flynn was also shortlisted for the Michael Marks Award For Poetry Pamphlets for her 2021 pamphlet "Nina Simone is Singing".
In 2022 she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Personal life
Leontia Flynn is separated and lives in Belfast, with her daughter.
Books
Poetry
- These Days Jonathan Cape 2004; ISBN: 0-224-07197-1.
- Drives Jonathan Cape 2008; ISBN: 0-224-08517-4.
- Profit and Loss Jonathan Cape 2011; ISBN: 0-224-09343-6
- The Radio Jonathan Cape 2017; ISBN: 1-787-33008-7
Pamphlets
- Slim New Book(Lifeboat Press) 2020
- Nina Simone is Singing(Mariscat) 2021
See also
- Factotum (arts organisation)
