Keith Flynn
Some stories need a page. Some need a stage. Some need a screen. Keith Flynn has always understood that the most powerful stories need all three.
For a film festival audience, Keith Flynn’s work offers something rare: a living demonstration of what happens when an artist refuses to be contained by a single medium. His poetry becomes lyric. His lyric becomes performance. His performance becomes documentation. His documentation becomes community. That is the full creative arc that Down East Flick Fest exists to celebrate.
Keith Flynn (www.keithflynn.net) is the award-winning author of eight books, including six collections of poetry: most recently Colony Collapse Disorder (Wings Press, 2013) and The Skin of Meaning (Red Hen Press, 2020), and two collections of essays, entitled The Rhythm Method, Razzmatazz and Memory: How To Make Your Poetry Swing (Writer’s Digest Books, 2007), and Prosperity Gospel: Portraits of the Great Recession (RedHawk Publications, 2021). From 1984-1999, he was lyricist and lead singer for the nationally acclaimed rock band, The Crystal Zoo, which produced three albums: Swimming Through Lake Eerie (1992), Pouch (1996), and the spoken-word and music compilation, Nervous Splendor (2003).
His latest album is Keith Flynn & The Holy Men, LIVE at Diana Wortham Theatre (2011). He is the Executive Director and producer of the TV and radio show, “LIVE at White Rock Hall,” (www.liveatwhiterockhall.com) and Animal Sounds Productions, both which create collaborations between writers and musicians in video and audio formats. His award-winning poetry and essays have appeared in many journals and anthologies around the world, including The American Literary Review, The Colorado Review, Poetry Wales, Five Points, Poetry East, The Southern Poetry Anthology, The Poetics of American Song Lyrics, Writer’s Chronicle, The Cimarron Review, Rattle, Shenandoah, Word and Witness: 100 Years of NC Poetry, Crazyhorse, and many others. He has been awarded the Sandburg Prize for poetry, a 2013 NC Literary Fellowship, the ASCAP Emerging Songwriter Prize, the Paumanok Poetry Award and was twice named the Gilbert-Chappell Distinguished Poet for NC. Flynn is founder and managing editor of The Asheville Poetry Review, which began publishing in 1994.
Why Keith Flynn and Why Now
Down East Flick Fest has always believed that the boundaries between art forms are suggestions, not walls. Keith Flynn has lived that belief for his entire career.
His television and radio production work through LIVE at White Rock Hall and Animal Sounds Productions places him squarely in the world of visual and audio storytelling. His collaborations between writers and musicians are, at their core, what filmmakers do every time they bring a story to the screen: find the place where language, sound, image, and performance meet and hold.
The Sweet Tea Award recognizes North Carolina traditions, community building, and cultural awareness. Keith Flynn has been doing exactly that since 1994 when he founded The Asheville Poetry Review and since 1984 when he first put a microphone in his hand and started telling North Carolina’s story out loud.
The Community Impact Award recognizes work that changes things. Thirty years of publishing, performing, teaching, and creating access to literary and artistic community across this state is work that changes things.
DEFF is honored to place both awards in his hands.
Connect with Keith Flynn
• Website: www.keithflynn.net
• LIVE at White Rock Hall: www.liveatwhiterockhall.com