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Center for Social Policy
McCormack Graduate School
University of Massachusetts Boston
100 Morrissey Blvd.
Boston, MA 02125-3393
Phone: (617) 287 5550
Fax: (617) 287 5544
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Poet will read work chronicling homeless life
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Author(s):
Jessica Heslam
Source(s):
Boston Herald
Date: October 28, 2004
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Nick Flynn was 27 years old and working at the city's Pine Street Inn when he met his father for
the first time since childhood.
His father, Jonathan, had been evicted and became homeless for five years, spending many nights
at the Hub shelter where his son was a caseworker.
"There's a big problem with thinking they are some other species or class of human being. It's
not true," said Flynn, who recently published a memoir exploring his relationship with his
alcoholic father.
Flynn, now a 44-year-old award-winning poet, plans to read from his book, "Another Bullshit Night
in Suck City," today at the Hub's first-ever homelessness prevention summit.
The title came from his father, who used those words to describe life on the streets.
"That the number of homeless people keeps rising is a sign of a breakdown in society," said Flynn,
who nows lives in New York.
"The homeless represent something. It's the tip of the iceberg. This is what you can see. There's
a lot of people struggling," he said.
With the Hub's homeless population at more than 6,000, researchers at the University of
Massachusetts at Boston Center for Social Policy have tracked nearly 200 "chronically" homeless
men and women for three years. Research results, to be released today, found in part that most
had severe medical conditions and suffered from substance abuse and mental illness.
While in Boston, Flynn said he plans to visit his father, who now lives in subsidized housing.
"It's the same apartment he's had since he got off the streets," Flynn said.
(Flynn plans to read at 12:30 p.m. at Ned Devine's Irish Pub, Faneuil Hall Marketplace.)
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