At the age of 11, she and her parents abruptly moved to Anna Maria Island in Florida due her father's terminal cancer diagnosis; he died two years later.

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 school Le Cordon Bleu.

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.

[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.

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 the Guinness 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 in The Sharper Your Knife.

They have divided their time between residences in Seattle and Anna Maria Island, Florida, since 2004, after they married at the home once owned by Fred Hutchinson on Beach Avenue.