Who Is Dan?
Dan Flanigan is a novelist, playwright, poet, and practicing lawyer. He holds a Ph.D. in History from Rice University and J.D. from the University of Houston. He taught Jurisprudence at the University of Houston and American Legal History at the University of Virginia. His first published book was his Ph.D. dissertation, The Criminal Law of Slavery and Freedom, 1800-1868.
He moved on from academia to serve the civil rights cause as a school desegregation lawyer, followed by a long career as a finance attorney in private law practice. He became a name partner in the Polsinelli law firm in Kansas City, created its Financial Services practice, chaired its Real Estate & Financial Services Department for two decades, and established the firm’s New York City office and served as its managing partner until October 2022. His legal bio may be viewed at https://www.polsinelli.com/professionals/dflanigan.
Taking a break from the law practice for two years, he and his wife, Candy, founded Sierra Tucson, a prominent alcohol and drug treatment center located in Tucson, Arizona.
Recently, he has been able to turn his attention to his lifelong ambition—creative writing. In 2019 he released a literary trifecta including Mink Eyes, the first in the Peter O’Keefe series, Dewdrops, a collection of shorter fiction (a novella book-ended by two short stories), and Tenbrae: A Memoir of Love and Death, a bracelet of verse and prose poems dedicated to his wife, Candy, to honor her last illness and death and their 40-plus years together, a work that has been described as “moving,” “elegiac,” “celebratory,” “heartbreaking and exquisite.” Tenebrae: A Memoir of Love and Death was a 2021 Readers’ Favorite Finalist in the Poetry category.
The Big Tilt, the award-winning second book in the Peter O’Keefe series, was published in 2020 that has been described as a “gritty and eloquent crime novel” and “deft, hard-boiled, but literary prose that’s reminiscent of Raymond Chandler’s best work.” The Big Tilt won the 2022 National Indie Excellence Award for Crime Fiction and the 2021 Readers’ Favorite Bronze Medal in Fiction-Crime.
On Lonesome Roads, published April 26, 2022, is the third book in the series. Among the many five-star reviews, Readers’ Favorite called it “entertaining and consuming,” and “the pace was fast, the characters were developed and the overall feel of the plot was great.” According to Book Life Publisher’s Weekly, “…Flanigan never skimps on noir atmosphere, crisply rendered action, or pulpy surprises.”
He has also written stage plays including Secrets (based on the life of Eleanor Marx) and Moondog’s Progress (inspired by the life of Alan Freed).
His novella, Dewdrops, was originally written for the stage and enjoyed a full-cast staged reading at the Theatre of the Open Eye in New York. Its director described the play as a “powerful” work about “addiction in America—addiction to drugs, alcohol, sex, danger, power, and to finding ‘The Answer,’” with characters that are “well drawn, real, and actors love to portray them.” The short story collection comprised of Dewdrops, On the Last Frontier and Some Cold War Blues won the 2021 Readers’ Favorite Bronze Medal in Anthology Fiction.
He has written a feature film screenplay of Mink Eyes and a pilot for a TV series called O’Keefe.
He serves on the Board of Directors of Childhood USA, the U.S. arm of the World Childhood Foundation, established by Queen Silvia of Sweden, working to end child sexual abuse and exploitation everywhere.
He divides his time among Kansas City, New York City, and Los Angeles.
