Dan O'Brien

Dan O’Brien (born 1974) is an American playwright, poet, essayist, and librettist. His most prominent works have been the play The Body of an American and the poetry collection War Reporter. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for 2015–16. His play The House in Scarsdale: A Memoir for the Stage was the winner of the 2018 PEN America Award for Drama. Career O'Brien's fourth poetry collection, Our Cancers, was published by Acre Books in 2021. Stephen Wilson in the Times Literary Supplement writes: "[O’Brien] has produced an exquisite and terrible beauty in these pages." J. D. Schraffenberger in the North American Review writes: “Our Cancers tells [O’Brien’s] truth not only skillfully but masterfully, making from pain a lasting chronicle of art that traces fragmentary moments of healing over time.” In 2021 O'Brien also published a collection of essays entitled A Story That Happens: On Playwriting, Childhood, & Other Traumas (Dalkey Archive Press in the United States, and CB Editions in the United Kingdom). The book was praised by Margaret Gray in the Los Angeles Times as a "masterclass in survival through art." Caridad Svich in Contemporary Theatre Review describes the book as "[a] quiet revelation." Alice Jolly in the Times Literary Supplement writes: "This is a book for our times. It reminds us that theatre is 'fractured and failing yet struggling towards the mouth’s translation of the heart’s tongue.' Like [O’Brien], we buzz with the desire for the 'chance for more life, and for that most valued of theatrical currencies―change'." O'Brien's play The Body of an American was awarded the Edward M. Kennedy Prize for Drama, shared with Robert Schenkkan's All the Way. It premiered at Portland Center Stage in 2012 directed by Bill Rauch, and received its European premiere in an extended run at the Gate Theatre in London and Royal & Derngate in Northampton in 2014, directed by James Dacre. The play was produced off-Broadway by Primary Stages and Hartford Stage at the Cherry Lane Theatre in New York City in 2016, directed by Jo Bonney and distinguished by a "Critic's Pick" from the New York Times. The Body of an American is also winner of the Horton Foote Prize for Outstanding New American Play, L. Arnold Weissberger Award, administered by Williamstown Theatre Festival, and the PEN Center USA Award for Drama.