Books by Dan O'Brien

Poet and playwright Dan O'Brien chronicles the year and a half during which both he and his wife were treated for cancer.

Drawing deeply on O'Brien's experience of cancer and of childhood abuse, and of collaboration with a war reporter, the four essays in A Story that Happens offer hard-won insights into what stories are for and the reasons why, 'afraid and hopeful', we begin to tell them.

On a rainy afternoon in Key West, Florida, Brigid ducks into Niall O'Neill's cluttered pub, in search of her keys. Soon, it becomes clear that what Brigid is really seeking is much deeper-and more mysterious. Stories and secrets intertwine as Niall and Brigid balance the fine line between past and present, reality and shadow. "Reminiscent of Samuel Beckett's bumbling philosophers in WAITING FOR GODOT...the torrent that is KEY WEST hits the audience with a barrage of philosophical questions: Is God in every one of us? How is the thin line between ecstasy and insanity drawn? Is there life after death? What is the value of truth, and will we be haunted by our lies? And the story O'Brien weaves is entertaining. His plot drags the audience through the entire spectrum of human emotion before releasing them back into reality... [with] a shocking twist worthy of a good M Night Shyamalan reveal."Erin Morrison-Fortunato, Rochester City Newspaper

A collection of monologues from award-winning American playwright and poet Dan O'Brien.

In Scarsdale Dan OBrien applies to his own early life the same honesty and insight that were evident in his prize-winning War Reporter. Growing up in a family scarred by past trauma, he makes a bid for freedom in love with myself and this young strays life only to be pulled back into the orbit of the place he had sought to escape. ...

Since the publication of their first controversial novels in the 1950s and 1960s, Philip Roth and Edna O'Brien have always argued against the isolation of mind from body, autobiography from fiction, life from art, and self from nation. In this book Dan O'Brien investigates these shared concerns of the two authors.

Once a great falconer and environmentalist, Malone has entered middle age a broken man, devoid of the passion and promise of his youth. And now the developers are threatening to build condominiums on his beloved Brendan prairie.

The story of the residents of a small western plains town and the turmoil that results from the colliding interests of its "native" inhabitants and newcomers