Nicole Flattery Books in Order

Nicole Flattery was born in Kinnegad, County Westmeath, in 1989, and grew up in rural Ireland. That distance from big-city life has stayed with her, even as her fiction moves through Dublin, New York, strange future worlds, and rooms where people are trying hard to become somebody else.

She studied theatre and film at Trinity College Dublin. A playwriting module during her degree gave her a way into writing: she enjoyed the solitary work of making something from scratch, then began trying short stories. She later completed a master's degree in creative writing at Trinity.

The route wasn't especially tidy, which suits the people in her books.

A key early step came in 2017, when her story Track won the White Review Short Story Prize. Her shorter work has also appeared in Irish and British literary publications, and that experience helped build the sharp, close-up approach she brings to character, dialogue, and uncomfortable situations.

Her first book, Show Them a Good Time, arrived in 2019. It is a collection of stories about women dealing with bad relationships, uncertain work, sex, performance, loneliness, and the uneasy wish to start over. One story follows a woman caught up with a successful comedian in New York. Another finds a teacher dating while the world edges toward disaster. The setups can be surreal, but the emotional mess underneath is very recognizable.

The collection brought Flattery a Kate O'Brien Award, and she has also won an An Post Irish Book Award and the London Magazine Prize for Debut Fiction. Her work is often funny in a dry, sideways way, even when a character is facing something bleak or absurd.

In 2023, she published her first novel, Nothing Special. Set in New York in 1966, it follows seventeen-year-old Mae, who leaves school and takes a typing job at Andy Warhol's Factory. Mae and another young typist, Shelley, transcribe recordings of the people around Warhol, drawing Mae into questions of fame, friendship, art, privacy, and the danger of living through other people's stories.

Flattery has said that the idea for Nothing Special grew from Andy Warhol's recorded, loosely edited novel a, A Novel. She researched the period through biographies, exhibitions, films, and conversations with people who had been there, while keeping the focus on the young women who did the often invisible work around the Factory.

Her books return to people who are testing identities, stuck in roles, or watching themselves be watched. She writes about work, self-invention, intimacy, and the pressure to perform, but keeps the language brisk and the humor close at hand.

Flattery lives in Dublin. She has also spoken warmly about returning to County Westmeath, including winter swims near her parents' home.