Cal Flyn

Cal Flyn is a Scottish author and journalist.^[1]

Early life

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]

Career

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]

Works

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]

Personal life

Flyn lives in the Orkney Islands.^[25]

Selected publications

• Thicker Than Water: History, Secrets and Guilt: A Memoir (2016, William Collins: ISBN 978-0008126605)
• Islands of Abandonment: Life in the Post-Human Landscape (2020, William Collins: ISBN 978-0008329761)