Gillian Schieber Flynn[1][2][3] (/ˈɡɪliən/;[4] born February 24, 1971) is an American author, screenwriter, and producer, best known for her thriller and mystery novels Sharp Objects (2006), Dark Places (2009), and Gone Girl (2012), all of which have received critical acclaim.

She also wrote and produced the HBO limited series adaptation of Sharp Objects, for which she received nominations for the Primetime Emmy and the Writers Guild of America Award.

Flynn served as showrunner, writer, and executive producer for Amazon Prime Video’s sci-fi thriller series Utopia (2020), which ran for one season.

[9][10] As a young woman, Flynn worked jobs which required her to dress up as a giant “yogurt cone who wore a tuxedo.”[13][14] She attended Bishop Miege High School,[9] graduating in 1989,[13] and went on to earn undergraduate degrees in English and journalism from the University of Kansas.

[14] After spending two years in California writing at a trade magazine for human resources professionals, Flynn moved to Chicago and attended Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, where she completed a master’s degree in 1997.

[17][18] After graduating from Northwestern, Flynn worked freelance briefly at U.S. News & World Report before joining Entertainment Weekly in 1998 as a feature writer,[9] eventually becoming a television critic.

[5] However, Flynn identifies as a feminist,[5] and has defended her choice to write female characters who defy conventional expectations of women as inherently nurturing or morally virtuous.

[27][28] Flynn's second novel, Dark Places (2009), follows a woman who begins to question whether her incarcerated brother was truly responsible for the murder of their family during the Satanic panic era of the 1980s, when she was a child.

[32] Her third novel, Gone Girl (2012), centers on Nick Dunne, a small-town Missouri creative writing professor, and his wife Amy Elliott, who mysteriously disappears on their fifth wedding anniversary.

The narrative follows a sex worker turned fake psychic, hired by a woman to cleanse her Victorian home, which is troubled by a deteriorating marriage and a disturbing stepson.

[49] Starring Viola Davis, Elizabeth Debicki, Michelle Rodriguez, Cynthia Erivo, Colin Farrell, Brian Tyree Henry, Daniel Kaluuya, and Liam Neeson, the film was released in November 2018 to high praise from movie critics.

[32] Furthermore, she is collaborating with Tim Burton on a remake of Nathan H. Juran’s classic Attack of the 50 Foot Woman film for Warner Bros.[53] Flynn married lawyer Brett Nolan in 2007, having met him during graduate school at Northwestern.