Flock, Elizabeth

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Flock, Elizabeth

PERSONAL:

Female. Education: Graduated from Vanderbilt University.

ADDRESSES:

Home—New York, NY. Agent—Larry Kirshbaum, LJK Literary Management, 708 3rd Ave., Ste. 1600, New York, NY 10017. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Journalist and fiction writer. Vanity Fair, former editorial assistant; print journalist based in San Francisco, CA, for five years; news anchor and reporter for San Francisco cable news station; National Broadcasting Companies (NBC) affiliate, San Francisco, news writer; Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), New York, NY, correspondent.

WRITINGS:

NOVELS

But Inside I'm Screaming, Mira Books (Don Mills, Ontario, Canada), 2003.

Me and Emma, Mira Books (Don Mills, Ontario, Canada), 2005.

Everything Must Go, Mira Books (Don Mills, Ontario, Canada), 2006.

SIDELIGHTS:

Novelist Elizabeth Flock was raised in Connecticut but spent her vacations visiting with family in the South, particularly with her grandparents in Texas. Her affinity for that area led her to attend Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. Following graduation, she lived in London for a year before settling in San Francisco, where she spent five years working as a print journalist prior to turning her attention to broadcasting. Flock served in several positions for a San Francisco television news station before eventually moving to New York City and obtaining a job at CBS News. Eventually, she settled she settled in Chicago, where she concentrated on writing novels.

Flock's first novel, But Inside I'm Screaming, mines her experience as a journalist in its story of a young reporter trying to cope with mental illness. Her follow-up, Me and Emma, is a sprawling Southern family saga told through the eyes of Carrie, an eight year old suffering abuse at the hands of her stepfather. Though a Publish-ers Weekly reviewer made note of Flock's "meandering story," a contributor for Kirkus Reviews found the novel "tremendously touching" and maintained that it "captures Carrie's powerlessness and resourcefulness beautifully." Deborah Donovan, in a review for Booklist, cited Me and Emma as a novel that is "not soon forgotten."

Everything Must Go concerns Henry Powell, whose dreams of college football stardom were put on hold when he returned to his small New England hometown to care for his emotionally disturbed, alcoholic mother. Now age thirty-one, Henry works as a salesman at a men's clothing store, where visits from his former classmates serve to remind him of the promise of his youth. "Another strong characterization from Flock, who uncannily immerses herself in Henry's vulnerable, yet stalwart, psyche," observed Booklist contributor Donovan. Writing in Library Journal, Kellie Gillespie noted that the circumstances of Henry's life "turns a sad story into a long and weary one." but Dallas Morning News contributor Joy Tipping wrote that "in Ms. Flock's talented hands, [Henry] becomes … someone readers will keep rooting for long after it would seem the game is over."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, February 1, 2005, Deborah Donovan, review of Me and Emma, p. 941; October 15, 2006, Deborah Donovan, review of Everything Must Go, p. 28.

Dallas Morning News, December 31, 2006, Joy Tipping, "A ‘Loser’ Worth Rooting For," review of Everything Must Go.

Kirkus Reviews, January 1, 2005, review of Me and Emma, p. 7.

Library Journal, November 1, 2006, Kellie Gillespie, review of Everything Must Go, p. 67.

Publishers Weekly, January 17, 2005, review of Me and Emma, p. 33; August 21, 2006, review of Everything Must Go, p. 47.