Nick Flynn to read March 31

Nick Flynn. Photo © Geordie Wood 2010. Download high-res version.

Celebrated memoirist, poet and playwright Nick Flynn, author most recently of The Ticking is the Bomb: A Memoir of Bewilderment (2010), will read from his work at 8 p.m. Wednesday, March 31, for The Writing Program Reading Series.

The talk — which is sponsored by The Writing Program in the Department of English in Arts & Sciences — is free and open to the public and takes place in Hurst Lounge, Room 201, Duncker Hall. A reception and booksigning will immediately follow.

Duncker Hall is located at the northwest corner of Brookings Quadrangle. For more information, call (314) 935-7130 or email David Schuman at dschuman@wustl.edu.

Flynn is perhaps best known for his previous memoir, Another Bullshit Night in Suck City (2004), which recounts his tumultuous childhood on Boston’s South Shore. As a teenager Flynn began receiving letters from his estranged father, Jonathan, a self-proclaimed poet and con man doing time in federal prison for bank robbery. Though Flynn had only met Jonathan once, at the age of eight, their paths would cross again years later when Jonathan checked into the Boston homeless shelter where Nick was then working.

“Another Bullshit Night in Suck City succeeds in a way most writers can only dream of: It is intense, lyrical, moving and ultimately enlightening,” writes Stephen Elliot of the San Francisco Chronicle. “This is a book about no less than the vale of blood and the permanence of familial relations. A strangely poignant meditation on the debt sons owe their fathers, even bad fathers, even fathers that weren’t around.”

The Ticking is the Bomb finds Flynn returning to themes of family, as he prepares for the birth of his own daughter. Yet the book also interweaves passages about his mother, who committed suicide; his relationships with women; and his growing obsession with the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib — several of whom he met during a trip to Istanbul.

Flynn’s other books include two volumes of poetry, Some Ether (2000) and Blind Huber (2002), as well as a play, Alice Invents a Little Game and Alice Always Wins (2008). His film credits include serving as artistic collaborator and “field poet” on Hubert Sauper’s Darwin’s Nightmare, which was nominated for an Academy Award for best feature documentary in 2006.

Additional honors include fellowships from The Guggenheim Foundation and The Library of Congress as well as a PEN/Martha Albrand Award for Another Bullshit Night in Suck City, which also was shortlisted for France’s Prix Femina.