Kathy Flann

Kathy Flann’s first short story collection, Smoky Ordinary, won the Serena McDonald Kennedy Award and was published by Snake Nation Press. A second collection, Get a Grip, received the George Garrett Fiction Prize and was published by Texas Review Press. Get a Grip was named one of the Best Books of the Year by Baltimore Magazine. The book won the short story category of The Best Book Awards, The International Book Award, and the National Indie Excellence Award. Her short stories have appeared in more than 25 journals and anthologies, such as Shenandoah, The North American Review, Blackbird, and The Michigan Quarterly Review. She is a recipient of a Maryland State Arts Council Award and a Baker Artist Award.

Also a humor writer, her pieces have appeared in McSweeney’s, Weekly Humorist, Slackjaw, Points in Case, and elsewhere. She is the author of How to Survive a Human Attack: A Guide for Werewolves, Mummies, Cyborgs, Ghosts, Nuclear Mutants and Other Movie Monsters (Running Press/Hachette), a New York Times/Wirecutter pick for “Gifts We Want to Give.”

Her creative nonfiction and feature articles have appeared in Baltimore Style, Baltimore Fishbowl, The Gettysburg Review, The Texas Review, Monkeybicycle, and other publications.

She has taught at many universities in the US and also in England, where she served as a Senior Lecturer and Course Leader of creative writing at the University of Cumbria. During five years in the UK, she also created mini-courses for the BBC’s Get Writing website and served on the board of the National Association of Writers in Education.

Flann grew up in the Washington, D.C. area, and she studied literature and writing at Virginia Tech, Auburn University, and UNC-Greensboro. She’s been a fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Sozopol Fiction Seminars in Bulgaria, and Le Moulin a Nef in France. She lives with her husband, her son, and an 11-pound Yorkie-poo.