Flanagan was born in 1923 in Greenwich, Connecticut,[2] to a homemaker mother and a dentist father.
He received his Master of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy degrees from Columbia University.
He was a tenured Full Professor in the English Department at the Stony Brook University until his retirement.
His first novel, The Year of the French, won the National Book Critics Award for fiction in 1979 and was adapted into a TV series, which was broadcast in Ireland in 1982.
[1] The Archives and Special Collections at Amherst College holds his papers.