Dan O’Brien is a playwright, poet, librettist, and essayist whose recognition includes a
Guggenheim Fellowship in Drama & Performance Art and the UK’s Fenton Aldeburgh Poetry
Prize. True Story: A Trilogy of O’Brien’s plays was published by Dalkey Archive Press in 2023,
and in 2021 his collection of essays, A Story That Happens: On Playwriting, Childhood, & Other
Traumas, was published by Dalkey Archive in the US and by CB Editions in the UK. His poetry
collections are Survivor’s Notebook, Our Cancers, New Life, Scarsdale, and War Reporter. His
plays include The Body of an American, winner of the PEN USA Award, the Edward M. Kennedy
Prize, and the Horton Foote Prize, and The House in Scarsdale, winner of a PEN America Award.
He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, the actor and writer Jessica St. Clair, and their daughter
Isobel.