carolynflynn.com | Memoirist, novelist and essayist Carolyn Dawn Flynn is the author of the memoir Boundless and seven books of transformational nonfiction. Boundless was longlisted for the 2021 Mslexia International Memoir Prize and the 2022 First Pages Prize. Her work has been published in Fourth Genre, Under the Gum Tree, Arts and Letters, Hunger Mountain, The Colorado Sun, The Tampa Review, The Whitefish Review (Montana Prize for Fiction), Albuquerque Journal, Sage Magazine, Albuquerque the Magazine and Wilde Frauen.
Her work has been published in Fourth Genre, Under the Gum Tree, Arts and Letters, Hunger Mountain, The Colorado Sun, The Tampa Review, The Whitefish Review (Montana Prize for Fiction), Albuquerque Journal, Sage Magazine, Albuquerque the Magazine and Wilde Frauen. Her most recent journalism pieces include a guide to emotional agility and living boundlessly, “How to Get Unstuck: (Hint) Think Like a Twentysomething” for AARP magazine in April/May 2026. Her short story collection, Broken Chords, was a semifinalist for the Katherine Anne Porter short story prize.
In her TEDx Women talk, “Tell a Better Story, Live a Better Life,” she has inspired countless others to live their sacred yes—even in a world that may split open, as the writer Muriel Rukeyser once famously said, if one woman spoke the truth.
She is owner of The Story Catalyst, which has offered book coaching, developmental editing and publishing consulting for many author clients for more than 10 years.
She lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where she is a hiker and a pilgrim and a desert dweller who is an appreciator of horizons.
As the daughter of pianist (my mother) and a writer (my father), writing has always been a sacred calling for me. So very often, my summons to inspiration comes from music.
The pure and simple expression of a song is the seed-star of the emotional change that drives a scene. The elegant structure of a song is what carries me when I think about how to construct a narrative arc.
Songs make me want to write, and then teach me how I am to write.
Carolyn Flynn
Q & A with Author & Book Coach Carolyn Flynn
For how long have you been writing?
I’ve been a writer since I was eight years old. It feels like a creative inheritance. A birthright. What I was meant to do on this planet.
I wrote my first novel in the sixth grade, offering daily installments to my friends, who clamored for the pages from my notebook at lunchtime in the cafeteria at Garden Springs Elementary School. So, I was on my way.
What were the hardest aspects of writing this book and getting it published?
As I was writing Boundless, I sometimes had to gasp for breath and ask myself, “Why does this book unstitch me?” This was a good thing. The more I asked that question, the more came to the brink. I could show what was at stake—and it was all-encompassing.
SOCIAL MEDIA LINKS
More Places & Words
Email:
TEDx talk “Tell A Better Story, Live a Better Life”
Threads: https://www.threads.com/@carolyn_flynn
Boundless is available in these places:
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/noresults/9798891324824
https://bookshop.org/p/books/boundless-carolyn-dawn-flynn/7a20188b7f93a5ad?ean=9798891324824&next=t&
Audiobook
Links to all podcasts for Boundless on Spotify
Substack highlights
Most Shared
Sixteen Superpowers of Memoir Writers
Eleven Clever Ways to Quiet Your Inner Critic
That Time When I Almost Said the F-word on Public Airwaves
STORY CATALYST POSTS
ReVision is Where It’s At: It’s How You Make Your Book Great: 11 Practical Ways to Layer Your Revision So You Can Call Your Book Done
What I Learned by Sleeping Around (With My Favorite Books): A guide to recommended writing craft books and my list of literary magnificence
Why A Book Proposal is So Damn Hard to Write
A book proposal is the super-hack — it will get you through the gate to agents and publishers. It’s also the most potent form of clarity you’ll ever have. So why is it so hard to write?
The Self As the Highway to Our Stories
Notes from a Reluctant Memoirist, Or Why I Keep Getting Pregnant with Memoirs When I’m Really a Fiction Writer.
BOUNDLESS POSTS
Why My Book is Nothing But a House of Cards
The true purpose of memoir is to transform your tired old narratives into new meaning. In Boundless, my forthcoming memoir, I find personal liberation and a way to reinvent my own story about myself.
‘Meet Me in the Woods’: Song #12 from the Boundless soundtrack
Take a little journey to the unknown, and find your emotional agility. In BOUNDLESS, my newly published memoir, I learn to take risks again.
Why Writing Your Book Will Change You As Much As It Will Change the World
Invite in the fire of purification with Bealtaine, the Celtic festival of fire, so you can summon the persistence to turn your writing into art
From Lived Experience to a Book: The Path of My Memoir, Boundless
A TIMELINE OF SORTS
Stories & Songs Posts
Just This: The Art of Taking Yourself on Retreat
Tempted to escape to Tuscany to write and write and write? Yeah, us, too.
Write from the Thin Places
Beckonings from the Stories + Songs Writing Retreat in Tuscany, Italy
Medium posts on Ireland
[The ones that go directly to Medium are all “friend” links, so you don’t need to be a member]
https://carolynflynn.substack.com/s/oceans-love-to-ireland
We are warmed by our own walking
Farewell to Ireland
After a month-long stay, it was going to break my heart to leave. As a consolation, there was a diaspora of sand.