I grew up in San Jose, California. When I was a teenager in San Jose, my dad took me to poetry readings. I first started reading at open mics in the late-1990s. Throughout my twenties, I produced a handful of stapled chapbooks and wrote poetry and fiction as I bounced between Portland and Chicago.

I studied for my PhD in English literature from 2009 - 2017 at Rutgers University in New Jersey. After a brief stint in Michigan in 2017, I moved back to the Pacific Northwest and started a new career as a software engineer. I currently live in Seattle with my wife, daughter, and our dog, Cassiopeia.

Silas Flannery is a pen name that I’ve adopted for publishing the poetry I have written over the last several decades. The name originates from Italo Calvino’s If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler.

All works here are living things that are subject to revision and change. Most of the poems and essays are best thought of as drafts or fragments.

I started posting them online on March 15, 2024.

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Send thoughts and comments to me@silasflannery.com