Caitlin Flanagan

Caitlin Flanagan is a former staff writer at The Atlantic. She is the author of Girl Land and To Hell With All That. Caitlin Flanagan began her magazine-writing career, in 2001, with a series of extended book reviews about the conflicts at the very heart of modern life—specifically, modern domestic life as it is lived by professional-class women. Flanagan quickly established herself as a highly entertaining social critic unafraid to take on self-indulgence and political correctness, and her essays provide penetrating and witheringly funny observations about the sexes and their discontents.

Flanagan's Atlantic articles have been named as finalists for the National Magazine Award seven times, and her essay “Confessions of a Prep School College Counselor,” which ran in September 2001, was included in the 2002 compilation of Best American Magazine Writing. Her work has also been included in Best American Essays 2003 and Best American Magazine Writing 2003. She is the author of the book To Hell With All That—an exploration, based on her Atlantic articles, of the lives of modern women.

Born and raised in Berkeley, California, Flanagan earned a B.A. and an M.A. in art history from the University of Virginia.