Keith Flynn studied at Mars Hill College and the University of North Carolina at Asheville (UNCA), where he studied Creative Writing and Political Science. After college, Flynn moved to Nashville, Tennessee, and formed the nationally acclaimed rock band, The Crystal Zoo, which produced three albums: Swimming Through Lake Eerie (1992), Pouch (1996) and Nervous Splendor (2003), an innovative compilation of music and spoken word.
Flynn is the author of five collections of poetry: The Talking Drum(1991), The Book of Monsters (1994), The Lost Sea (2000), and The Golden Ratio (2007), and Colony Collapse Disorder (2013). His poems have appeared in hundreds of magazines, journals, and anthologies in the United States and Europe, including The American Literary Review, Ecotone, Cave Wall, The Poetics of American Song Lyrics, The Carolina Quarterly, The Colorado Review, Crazyhorse, The Cuirt Journal (Ireland), Earth and Soul: The Kostroma Anthology (Russia), The 20th Century Anthology of NC Poets, Poetry Wales, Takahe (New Zealand), Margie, Shenandoah, Quarterly Review (Singapore), Rattle, and The Southern Poetry Review.
He has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, for the Pushcart Prize, was awarded the Paumanok Poetry Prize in 1996, and has given thousands of performances from his work across North America and abroad. In 2005 and 2006, Flynn served as the Gilbert-Chappell Distinguished Poet for North Carolina, working to promote the cultural importance of poetry in his home state. He is also the founder and editor of The Asheville Poetry Review, a literary journal established in 1994, that has published over 1,500 writers from 22 countries.
His first collection of essays, The Rhythm Method, Razzmatazz and Memory: How To Make Your Poetry Swing, was published by Writer’s Digest Books in February, 2007.
Flynn is currently touring with his combo, The Holy Men, whose first album, LIVE at Diana Wortham Theatre, was released in 2011.