Catherine O’Flynn

Catherine O’Flynn is a novelist. Her debut novel What Was Lost (Tindal Street, 2007) won the Costa First Novel award, was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book award, and longlisted for the Booker and Orange prizes. She was named Newcomer of the Year at the 2008 British book awards.

The News Where You Are (Penguin, 2010) was shortlisted for the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse prize, an Edgar Allan Poe award and was chosen for the TV Book Club (Channel 4).

Catherine is the editor of a short story collection, Roads Ahead (Tindal Street, 2009). Her own short stories and articles have featured in Granta, the New York Times, the Observer and on BBC Radio 3 and 4. She is a regular book reviewer for the Guardian.

Prior to the publication of her first novel Catherine did a variety of jobs including web editor, box-office assistant, record shop manager, civil servant, postwoman, teacher and mystery shopper. She draws upon these experiences in her writing.

Catherine has been described by Fay Weldon as ‘the JG Ballard of Birmingham…finding poetry and meaning where others see merely boredom and dereliction’ (the Guardian, 2010). She lives amidst that boredom and dereliction in Birmingham with her husband and two daughters.