Mr. Flythe was the author of two volumes of short stories: Lent: The Slow Fast, winner of the Iowa Short Fiction Award, and Driving With Hand Controls, winner of the Serena McDonald Kennedy Award from Snake-Nation-Press. His stories were anthologized in Best American Short Stories, New Stories from the South, and the O. Henry Prize volumes. 

His poems were widely published in magazines, including the poem "Greeks" in the August 8, 2011, edition of The New Yorker. 

His poem, "Katherine, locked in the bathroom" won the Constance E. Pultz Prize from the Poetry Society of South Carolina. He published three collections of poetry in his lifetime: Paying the Anesthesiologist, They Say Dancing, and The Futile Lesson of Glue, which won the Violet Reed Haas Award. 

Several of his novels, including The Viking, were made into Hollywood movies in the 1940s and 1950s. He began a career as editor for the Curtis Publishing Company. He managed Holiday and re-founded The Saturday Evening Post. 

He accompanied President Nixon on a trip to the Middle East in 1975 and interviewed a number of celebrities, including Lady Bird Johnson, Johnny Cash, Cher, James Brown, The Beach Boys and John Denver. 

He was a central figure in the establishment of the Augusta Poetry Group, served as President of the Authors Club of Augusta, helped to create and develop the Sand Hills Writers Conference (now the Sand Hills Writers Series) at Augusta University, represented the Poetry Society of South Carolina in the CSRA, and organized readings for the Westabou Festival and other literary events in both South Carolina and Georgia. 

Starkey Flythe, Jr., of Augusta, Georgia, died at the age of 78 on Friday, September 13, 2013.