Kathleen Flinn | |
|---|---|
 Kathleen Flinn at the Devour Food Film Festival in Nova Scotia 2013 | |
| Born | (1969-06-01)June 1, 1969 (age 56) |
| Occupation | Writer |
| Education | Columbia College Chicago Le Cordon Bleu,Paris |
| Genre | Food writing, narrative non-fiction |
| Notable works | The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry: Love, Laughter and Tears at the World's Most Famous Cooking School |
| Spouse | Michael Klozar |
| Website | |
| kathleenflinn | |
Kathleen Flinn (born June 1, 1969) is an American writer, journalist and chef. She is best known for the 2007New York Timesbestseller,The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry.
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Flinn was born inDavison,Michigan. Flinn states she began cooking at age eight to feed herself as alatchkey kid, and began writing stories around the same time. At the age of 11, she and her parents abruptly moved toAnna Maria Island inFlorida due her father's terminal cancer diagnosis; he died two years later. Her third book focuses on these early years in her life.[1]
Before she graduated fromManatee High School, she writes that she threw a dart at a map and it landed on Gary, Indiana, so she packed up her car and moved toChicago, the closest major city. She was 18 and had never been there.
Flinn's debut book,The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry was the first to provide an in-depth look of attending and graduating from the famed Paris culinary schoolLe Cordon Bleu.[2] The book has been translated into several languages and sold in more than 60 countries worldwide.
After losing her job due to a management reorganization, 36-year-old Flinn decided to cash in her savings to attend the famed culinary school, graduating with a diplome de cuisine in 2005. Throughout the book, Flinn intersperses dozens of recipes, accounts of her "wretchedly inadequate" French, stories of competitive classmates and the love story of her emerging relationship with her husband. Early in the book, she shares that she began dreaming of attending the famous cooking school while writing obituaries at TheSarasota Herald-Tribune.[3]The Seattle Times referred to the book "a very personal memoir of transformation, as well as an insider's look at Le Cordon Bleu, the first of its kind."[4] The book earned generally positive reviews on its debut and earned a spot onThe New York Times bestseller list as well as being included on numerous "best of" lists for 2007 before being named a finalist for theWashington State Book Award in General Non-fiction in 2008. Thefilm rights to the work were purchased by a division of20th Century Fox.[5]
Her second book,The Kitchen Counter Cooking School (Viking/Penguin, October 2011) chronicles a year-long project inspired by a supermarket encounter with a woman loading up on processed foods. Flinn used her culinary training to help novice cooks find their cooking confidence and in the process, reported on the state of home cooking in general.[6] The book earned a 2012ASJA Award for Best Book in the Non-Fiction Autobiography/Memoir category from theAmerican Society of Journalists and Authors[7]
Viking/Penguin published her third book,Burnt Toast Makes You Sing Good, a multi-generational culinary memoir about growing up in her home state of Michigan.[8] The title refers to her grandmother's phrase meant to coax the youngest kids to eat burnt toast. Flinn reflected it had a metaphorical meaning, "that going through something tough is good for you, or what doesn't kill you makes you stronger." That book was a finalist in several book awards, including Goodreads Readers Choice Awards and the International Association of Culinary Professionals,[9] and was named a Michigan Notable Book.[10]
Outside of her book publishing career, Flinn's work has been featured in more than three dozen publications worldwide.[11]
In 2017, Flinn's second book,The Kitchen Counter Cooking School, was translated into Japanese under the titleDameonnatachi no Jinsei wo Kaeta Kiseki no Ryouri Kyoushitsu[12] which loosely translates toMagical Recipes for Bad Women. The book was a bestseller, and among the few translated works that reached the top 30 in sales on Amazon.jp that year.[13][11] In 2018, Flinn announced that she was working on a new book specifically for the Japanese market. The resulting book,Sakana Lesson, debuted in June 2019 from CCC Media House.
While earning a B.A. in journalism atColumbia College Chicago, she held internships atAdweek andPlayboy magazines and worked as astringer for theChicago Sun-Times before launching on a journalism career that included newspapers and magazines. She was founding editor-in-chief ofInternet Underground,,[14] a print magazine about the internet launched in 1994 which later developed a cult following. She was recruited by Microsoft as one of a handful of writers to develop the prototype of what would become Sidewalk.com, the company's network of online city guides[15][16] In 2000, while working as a lead in the editorial operations for the company's MSN operation in London, she was among a small team that pulled together Madonna's "come back" concert at the Brixton Academy; with 11 million viewers, the event was listed in theGuinness Book of World Records as the largest live webcast for several years.[17][18]
Flinn is married to Michael Klozar, a Microsoft former colleague turned entrepreneur; their courtship is part of the story inThe Sharper Your Knife. They have divided their time between residences inSeattle andAnna Maria Island,Florida, since 2004, after they married at the home once owned byFred Hutchinson on Beach Avenue.
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