Dan O'Brien

Dan O’Brien is a playwright, poet, librettist, and nonfiction writer whose recognition includes a Guggenheim Fellowship, two PEN America Awards, the Fenton Aldeburgh Prize, the Edward M. Kennedy Prize, the Horton Foote Prize, and the L. Arnold Weissberger Award. O’Brien’s five poetry collections are Survivor’s Notebook, Our Cancers, Scarsdale, New Life, and War Reporter. A collection of O’Brien’s essays on playwriting, A Story That Happens, was published in 2021. In 2023 he published his memoir From Scarsdale: A Childhood, and a collection of plays, True Story: A Trilogy. He has taught at Princeton University, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and elsewhere. O’Brien lives in Los Angeles with his wife and daughter.