Robert Flanagan

Robert Flanagan was born and raised in Toledo, Ohio. His father, a disabled American veteran, his mother a plug tamper at Champion spark plug, he and his sister Mona lived in a one bedroom apartment above an Irish bar and grill near the corner of Monroe St. and Detroit Ave., catty corner to Swayne Field ball park, the old home of the Mud Hens.

His father's family, the Catholic Flanagans, came from Keadhue Village, Co. Roscommon, Ireland; his mother's family, the Protestant Treloars, from Redruth, Cornwall, England.

He attended St. Ann's grade school and Central Catholic high school, worked a series of odd jobs that included dishwasher, janitor and night watchman, served in the U.S. Marine Corps reserve, going through boot camp at Parris Island, and later went on to school, taking his B.A. at the University of Toledo and his M.A. at the University of Chicago.

He has published a novel, MAGGOT (Warner Books) which went through twelve printings and sold nearly a quarter of a million copies; a collection of stories, NAKED TO NAKED GOES (Scribners), named by the Cleveland Plain Dealer as one of the best books published in 1986; and a second story collection, LOVING POWER (Bottom Dog Press).

His stories have been included in various anthologies, among them: "Teller’s Ticket" in The Norton Book of American Short Stories; "All Alone and Blue" in Best Ohio Fiction, Bottom Dog Press; "Winter Term" in Ohio Short Fiction, Northmont Publishing. Also, "Berzerk" was a runner-up in Chicago's Nelson Algren Fiction Awards, and "Teller's Ticket," was adapted as a screenplay and made into a short film (by independent film maker Sheldon Gleisser) that won first place in The Hometown USA Video Festival in Oregon.

Flanagan is the author of two full-length stage plays, JUPUS REDEYE, and VOLLEYS, which have been produced by professional, college, and community theatres, including the American Theatre of Actors in NYC, and he has written various one acts and short shorts. VERSION 2.0, a short script written with Sheldon Gleisser was produced by Columbus Ohio's professional Contemporary American Theatre Company as part of its bi-annual shorts festival and was selected by Central Ohio critics as a best script of 2002.

As a poet, Flanagan has published five chapbooks of poems in the U.S., Canada, and No. Ireland, and his work appears in a number of anthologies, most notably in the seventh edition of An Introduction to Poetry (HarperCollins) edited by X. J. Kennedy.

A collection of Flanagan's manuscripts and publications is available for reference at the University of Toledo's Ward M. Canaday Center of the William S. Carlson Library.

He regularly reviews books for the Columbus Dispatch and has served as literary judge for numerous groups, including the Ohio Arts Council and the Great Lakes Colleges' New Writer Awards.

The former Director of Creative Writing at Ohio Wesleyan University, Flanagan, who lives in Delaware, Ohio, now writes full time.

He and his wife, Katy, the former Kathleen Borer from Ottawa, Ohio, a registered nurse, have two grown daughters, Anne and Nora.

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ROBERT FLANAGAN