Patrick Denman Flanery[1] was born in 1975 in California,[2] the son of politically liberal parents,[3] and grew up in Omaha, Nebraska, United States.

[4][2] He attended inner city de-segregated schools, "grew up with a consciousness of the problems of American race", and became aware of apartheid South Africa at an early age.

He worked for some years as a freelance script reader for Sony Pictures Entertainment and then as literary scout for a film production company in New York City.

[3] In 2001, he moved to the U.K.[5] At Oxford University, he earned a doctorate with a thesis about the publishing and adaptation histories of the novels of Evelyn Waugh, at the same time researching South African literature and film.

[4] Flanery taught modern and contemporary literature and literary theory as an adjunct professor at the University of Sheffield in the UK from 2005 to 2009,[4] and was also honorary fellow there at some point.

James Bradley of The Washington Post noted that "it paints a chilling picture of a society deranged by violence, paranoia and its own fantasies of self-reliance".

[29] A. S. Byatt, in a review of I Am No One in The Guardian, wroteOne of the pleasures of reading Flanery is the tussle between ways of understanding the shapes of stories and language.

He mixes, to quote an interview he gave, “expressionism, symbolism, surrealism” into what he calls "critical realism" – he writes realist novels which show their awareness that realism is a self-conscious form like others.Flanery's partner is (as of 2012[update]) an academic who was born in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, so Flanery "spent a lot of time in South Africa with extended family and friends, and living in domestic spaces".