I am a writer and Lecturer in Creative Writing. My passion and my training are in lyrical and hybrid forms. I did my graduate work in creative nonfiction and literary translation, and though I write beyond those genres constraints now, my practice is rooted first in research, then in craft, and the projects that attract me most combine the two.

Before Glasgow, I taught and wrote nonfiction, personal essay, and hybrid memoir. I did my M.F.A. at Columbia University, and my first book, a personal history of Argentine tango, was published in 2018 in the US. In 2022, I won a Scottish Book Trust Ignite Fellowship. 

I have two further book manuscripts under review (a memoir and a literary murder novel), and am currently working on a novel about the Eleusinian mysteries, Celtic and Greek mythological cycles, and perimenopause.

My essays and reviews have appeared in VQR, O, The Oprah Magazine, The Iowa Review, Psychology Today, Parents, and online at the New York Times, The Paris Review, Slate, The New Inquiry, and elsewhere. My essay “Ode to Gray” was named notable in 2019’s Best American Essays, and my essay "On Not Becoming An Ecosexual" in 2024's Best American Science & Nature Writing. I've published translations of poetry and short fiction from Spanish in Asymptote, Alchemy, and The Guardian.

mbflaherty.com 

• creative nonfiction
• hybrid memoir
• the essay
• literary translation
• translation theory
• autobiographical theory
• narrativity
• literary fiction
• ekphrasis
• metanarrative
• mythology
• folklore
• criticism
• decolonisation 
• interdisciplinary collaboration

Research groups

• Practice Research (Creative Writing)

List by: Type | Date

I am the interim convener for the Creative Writing Honours programme, in English Literature, and I teach across the MLitt in Creative Writing (Workshop, Craft & Experimentation).

Prizes, awards & distinctions

• 2022: Ignite Fellowship (Scottish Book Trust)