Leontia Flynn (born 1974) is an Irish poet born in Downpatrick, Northern Ireland. Flynn grew up in Ballyloughlin, south County Down, between the towns of Newcastle and Dundrum, very close to the well known Murlough Nature Reserve. After studying for a year at Trinity College Dublin, she completed a degree in English at Queen's University Belfast, followed by a Masters at Edinburgh, before returning to Belfast to write her PhD thesis on the poetry of Medbh McGuckian.
Flynn won an Eric Gregory Award in 2001, and her first collection, These Days, was published in 2004. It won that year's Forward Poetry Prize for 'Best First Collection'. In the same year Flynn was named as one the Next Generation poets by the Poetry Book Society. Flynn was awarded the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature in 2008 in recognition of her achievement and outstanding promise as a poet. Her book of poems, Drives, was published in the UK in August 2008 and was shortlisted for the 2009 Poetry Now Award.
In their review for These Days, shortlisted for the Whitbread Award in Poetry 2004, the Whitbread judges wrote: 'A breathtakingly accomplished debut. These Days transforms Flynn's experiences into literary jewels. She has exceptional insight and the writerly rigour of a poet many years her senior'
In its description of Drives, Random House states: Her second collection of poetry is a book of restless journeys — real and imaginary — interspersed with sonnets on writers. Starting in Belfast, where she lives, she visits a number of cities in Europe and the States, each one the occasion for an elliptical postcard home to herself.
The Poetry Book Society comments on her inclusion in the Next Generation poets promotion: 'Her poems cover a wonderful range of subjects. She writes movingly about her father but is terrific at simply tugging away at a subject until it releases poetry... These are poems to move from room to room reading, just as we imagine they might have been written, by a poet remembering and discovering the world.'
Leontia's third work Profit and Loss is shortlisted for the 2011 T. S. Eliot Prize.
Leontia Flynn currently lives in Belfast. Since its inception, she has been a regular contributor of reviews and essays to The Vacuum, a free monthly paper based in Belfast.