Books

When Flynn was working for Entertainment Weekly, she was also writing novels during her free time.^[12] She has written three novels and one short story.

• Sharp Objects (2006) revolves around a serial killer in a Missouri town, and the reporter who has returned to her hometown from Chicago to cover the event. Themes include dysfunctional families, violence and self-harm. The book was partly inspired by Dennis Lehane's Mystic River.^[26] In 2007, the book was shortlisted for the Mystery Writers of America Edgar for Best First Novel by an American Writer, Crime Writers' Association Duncan Lawrie, CWA New Blood and Ian Fleming Steel Daggers, winning in the last two categories.^[16] Sharp Objects was adapted into a 2018 television miniseries, starring Amy Adams.^[27]
• Dark Places (2009) is about a woman who investigates whether or not her incarcerated brother was truly responsible for the murder of their family in the 1980s, which happened when she was a child during the era of panic about Satanic ritual abuse. Dark Places was adapted into a feature film, written and directed by Gilles Paquet-Brenner. The cast included Charlize Theron,^[28] Nicholas Hoult,^[29] Christina Hendricks,^[30] Drea de Matteo,^[31] Chloë Grace Moretz, and Sean Bridgers. The film was released on August 7, 2015. Flynn made a cameo appearance in the film.^[32]
• Gone Girl (2012) was released in June 2012 and concerns Nick Dunne, a small town Missouri creative writing professor whose wife, Amy, disappears on their fifth wedding anniversary. Gone Girl was No. 1 on the New York Times Hardcover Fiction Bestseller list for eight weeks.^[33] Culture writer Dave Itzkoff wrote that the novel was, except for the Fifty Shades trilogy, the biggest literary phenomenon of 2012. By the end of that year, Gone Girl had sold over two million copies in print and digital editions, according to the book's publisher.^[33] Flynn wrote the script for a film adaptation of Gone Girl after 20th Century Fox purchased the film rights for $1.5 million.^[34] The film was directed by David Fincher, who also collaborated with Flynn on the screenplay, and starred Ben Affleck as Nick and Rosamund Pike as Amy^[35] and was released on October 3, 2014, to both critical acclaim and box office success.
• The Grownup (2015) was originally published as a short story in the 2014 anthology Rogues, edited by George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois, under the title "What Do You Do?". The story is about a sex worker who becomes a fake psychic and aura reader, and is then hired by a woman with a failing marriage and a disturbing stepson to purify her Victorian home. The story won the 2015 Edgar Award for Best Short Story.^[36] Flynn is currently writing the film adaptation, as she discussed in the Chanel Connects podcast in June 2022.^[37]

Comic book

Flynn was an avid reader of comic and graphic novels when she was a child.^[38] She collaborated with illustrator Dave Gibbons and wrote a comic book story called Masks. It is part of the anthology series Dark Horse Presents and was published by Dark Horse Comics in February 2015.^[39]

Television writing

Flynn was executive producer and cowriter, along with Marti Noxon, on the HBO adaptation of her novel Sharp Objects starring Amy Adams.^[40] The miniseries was released in 2018 and received critical acclaim.

In February 2014, it was reported that Flynn would be writing the scripts for Utopia, an HBO drama series adapted from the acclaimed British series Utopia. The HBO series was to be directed and executive produced by David Fincher. In July 2015 the project was cancelled due to budget disputes between Fincher and HBO.^[41][42] However, the project received second life at Amazon, with the streamer ordering the project to series with a 2020 release. Flynn wrote all eight episodes and served as the project's showrunner. Utopia was released on Amazon Prime Video on September 25, 2020.^[43] In November 2020, the series was canceled after one season.^[44]

Film

For her Gone Girl screenplay, Flynn was nominated for the Golden Globe, Writers Guild of America Award and BAFTA Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. Flynn and filmmaker Steve McQueen co-wrote a film adaptation of the ITV series Widows. The film stars Viola Davis, Michelle Rodriguez, Colin Farrell, Liam Neeson, Daniel Kaluuya, and Robert Duvall, and was released in November 2018 to critical acclaim.^[45]

Fiction

• Sharp Objects (2006)
• Dark Places (2009)
• Gone Girl (2012)
• The Grownup (short story) (2014)

Non-fiction

• "Gillian Flynn: A Howl". Time. Ideas. Dec 6, 2017. The outrages and allegations flash through my brain like a nasty, ludicrous slide show of twisted male power.
• "Gillian Flynn on Emma Thompson Reading The Turn of the Screw". The New York Times. Audiobooks. May 18, 2016. The Turn of the Screw is one of the most chilling ghost stories ever, largely because it is so deliciously elusive.
• "Be kind to people dressed as food ("Costume drama")". The New Yorker. Work for Hire. Oct 10, 2016. p. 78. In the late eighties, my job involved going out in public dressed as a tuxedoed dairy product. Children ran from me.
• "I Was Not a Nice Little Girl". Powell's Books. Jul 17, 2015. I was not a nice little girl. My favorite summertime hobby was stunning ants and feeding them to spiders. My preferred indoor diversion was a game called Mean Aunt Rosie, in which I pretended to be a witchy caregiver and my cousins tried to escape me.
• "Why Gillian Flynn Buys Her Purses from the Liquor Store". Elle. Personal Style. Oct 24, 2013. Let me give you an idea of my personal aesthetic: Until last year, I had no purse. I carried a wine bag.
• Gillian Flynn's Entertainment Weekly articles

Film

TV

Literature

Film

TV