Patrick Flanery was born in California in 1975 and raised in Omaha, Nebraska. He studied Film at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts and earned a PhD in Twentieth-Century English Literature at the University of Oxford. He contributes articles to a number of academic journals and he has written for Slightly Foxed, the Daily Telegraph and The Times Literary Supplement. His first novel, Absolution (Atlantic Books), was published to critical acclaim in 2012. He lives in London.