A Brief Tour of My Published Work
Memoirist, novelist and essayist Carolyn Dawn Flynn is the author of the memoir Boundless and seven books of nonfiction. Boundless was longlisted for the 2021 Mslexia International Memoir Prize and the 2022 First Pages Prize.
Her work has been published in Fourth Genre, Under the Gum Tree, Arts and Letters, The Colorado Sun, The Tampa Review, The Whitefish Review (Montana Prize for Fiction), Albuquerque Journal, Sage Magazine, Albuquerque the Magazine and Wilde Frauen.
She is a single mother of Ukrainian-Irish-American twins and was the longtime editor of a life-giving magazine called Sage. In her TEDx Women talk, “Tell a Better Story, Live a Better Life,” she has inspired countless others to live their sacred yes—even in a world that may split open, as the writer Muriel Rukeyser once famously said, if one woman spoke the truth.
She now lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where she is a hiker and a pilgrim and a desert dweller who is an appreciator of horizons.
Find out more at carolynflynn.com.
Boundless is available for pre-order!
My memoir about how we are always becoming someone new is arriving with perfect timing -- on a day of rebirth, Winter Solstice, which happens to be my birthday. Mark the date -- 12.21.2024! Read about it here. Get on the mailing list here.
Order it here!
BOOKSHOP - proceeds go to Bookworks, an independent bookstore in Albuquerque
Come on over to carolynflynn.com and sign up for the mailing list to get news about Living Boundlessly, Story Catalyst writing craft classes and Uncommon Hours productivity for creatives. Get a free downloadable book club discussion guide for Boundless at carolynflynn.com.
AWARDS + PUBLICATIONS
Link to books, stories and essays
What Happens Next
In Under the Gum Tree, July 2022, a spinoff essay from my memoir, Boundless.
In our last month together as mother and child, my seventeen-year-old son and I approach the aspen grove where the marriage that created him and his twin sister met its shattering end.
Opinion: Virtual graduations and pandemic depersonalization
“Opinion: Coping with virtual graduations and pandemic depersonalization | When you go to college in a laundry room and you graduate on a front porch, you don’t know how you are supposed to feel,” The Colorado Sun, 2021. This op-ed was a spinoff from my memoir “Boundless.”
Resurrection
“Resurrection,” published in January 2015 in Fourth Genre. An earlier version of this creative nonfiction essay won second runner-up in the 2013 Pinch Literary Journal creative nonfiction contest, judged by Abigail Thomas. It was a finalist for the 2014 Steinberg Essay Prize and for the Sustainable Arts Foundation fellowship.
“Resurrection” is an early work that lays the groundwork for my memoir, Boundless.
Pretend
“Pretend,” winner of the 2014 Rick Bass/Montana Prize for Fiction, published in The Whitefish Review (ISSUE 16). A previous version was short-listed for the 2009 Danahy prize in fiction by The Tampa Review.
Pound of Flesh
“Pound of Flesh,” a creative nonfiction piece published in The Tampa Review, which received glowing reviews in The Review Review; previously, that story was short-listed for the Tom Howard Prose Prize.
I Don't Remember It That Way
“I Don’t Remember It That Way,” the first chapter of a novel, published in The Petigru Review in November 2019. It was finalist in the 2021 Tucson Festival of Books for novel excerpt.
Blood
“Blood,” which won first place and was published in ABQ the Magazine.
A Recipe for Desire
A flash fiction piece that is a spinoff from my novel, Searching for Persephone. Features some pretty cool directions on how to make Hummingbird Cake for Reveillon. Arts & Letters (Issue 45)
First Cut, from Searching for Persephone
Searching for Persephone, a novel, semifinalist for the 2016 Elixir Press Fiction Prize. An excerpt of the novel was published in February 2019 on The Write Launch as “First Cut.”
Detox
“Detox,” published in Ellipsis, a literary journal published at Westminster College; previously published in German in the anthology Wilde Frauen, which included short stories by Isabel Allende, Joyce Carol Oates, Margaret Atwood and Pam Houston and a foreword by Clarissa Pinkola Estes.
Star-Crossed
“Star-Crossed,” published on The Write Launch (thewritelaunch.com), September 2020
Self-Help
“Self-Help,” which won the Renwick-Sumerwell prize and was published in The Crescent Review. That story also won first place in SouthWest Writers.
Improvising
“Improvising,” which has a touch of Southern Gothic, published on the Dead Mule School of Southern Literature.
Congratulations Carolyn Dawn Flynn!