Cal Flyn is a Scottish author and journalist.[1]
Flyn was born in Inverness, Scotland. She attended Charleston Academy, a state secondary school.[2] As a child, she underwent orthopedic surgery to correct proximal femoral focal deficiency affecting the left leg.[3]
Flyn holds an MA in experimental psychology from Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, and a NCTJ certificate in newspaper journalism from Lambeth College.[4][5]
After graduation, Flyn worked as a reporter for The Sunday Times and The Daily Telegraph.[2] She left her job in 2012 to work at a dog-sledding kennels in Finnish Lapland.[6] Flyn is the deputy editor of the literary recommendations website Five Books[7]
She was made a MacDowell fellow in 2019.[8] In 2022, she was declared 'Young Writer of the Year' by The Sunday Times.[9]
She is the author of nonfiction books Islands of Abandonment: Life in the Post-Human Landscape (2022)[10] and Thicker Than Water: History, Secrets, and Guilt (2016),[11] and has published essays and articles in Granta, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, The Sunday Times Magazine, and other publications.[12][13][14]
Her first book, Thicker Than Water, tells the story of a distant relative, Angus McMillan, who is believed to have been one of the ringleaders of the Gippsland massacres of Gunaikurnai aboriginal people.[15][16][17] Her second book, Islands of Abandonment, is an exploration of places where nature is reclaiming lands once occupied by humans, such as Plymouth, Montserrat, and Chernobyl.[18][19]
Islands of Abandonment won the John Burroughs Medal for natural history writing.[20] It was also shortlisted for the 2021 Wainwright Prize for writing on global conservation,[21] the 2021 Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction, the Royal Society of Literature's Ondaatje Prize[22] and the British Academy Book Prize,[23] among others.
Flyn's third book The Savage Landscape is planned for publication in 2025.[24]
Flyn lives in the Orkney Islands.[25]