Biography

DAN O’BRIEN is a playwright, poet, memoirist, essayist, and librettist. In 2023 he published three books: a memoir entitled From Scarsdale: A Childhood (Dalkey Archive Press); a collection of plays entitled True Story: A Trilogy (Dalkey Archive Press); and a collection of prose poems and photographs entitled Survivor's Notebook (Acre Books). In 2024 his play Newtown premiered at Geva Theatre, directed by Elizabeth Williamson. Newtown received the 2024 Blanche and Irving Laurie Foundation Theatre Visions Fund Award. Also in 2024, his pamphlet Flying on Easter and Other Poems was published by Poetry London.

O'Brien's play The House in Scarsdale: A Memoir for the Stage, winner of a PEN America Award in Drama, received a critically acclaimed world premiere at Boston Court Pasadena, directed by Michael Michetti, and was nominated for six Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle prizes including Best Play. O'Brien's The Body of an American received an off-Broadway premiere at the Cherry Lane Theatre, co-produced by Primary Stages and Hartford Stage, and directed by Jo Bonney (New York Times Critic's Pick). The Body of an American was the winner of the Horton Foote Prize for Outstanding New American Play, the inaugural Edward M. Kennedy Prize for Drama, the PEN Center USA Award for Drama, the L. Arnold Weissberger Award, and was shortlisted for the Evening Standard's Charles Wintour Award for Most Promising Playwright. The play premiered at Portland Center Stage, directed by Bill Rauch, and received its European premiere in an extended run at the Gate Theatre in London, in a co-production with Royal & Derngate Theatre in Northampton, England, directed by James Dacre. O'Brien was a 2015-16 Guggenheim Fellow in Drama & Performance Art. Dan O'Brien: Plays One is published by Oberon (Methuen / Bloomsbury). A collection of his essays entitled A Story That Happens: On Playwriting, Childhood, & Other Traumas was published in 2021 by CB Editions in the UK and by Dalkey Archive Press in the US.  

O'Brien's fourth poetry collection, Our Cancers, was published by Acre Books (University of Cincinnati Press) in 2021. His third collection, New Life, was published by CB Editions in London in 2015, and by Hanging Loose Press in Brooklyn in 2016. His second collection, Scarsdale, was published by CB Editions in 2014, and in the US by Measure Press in 2015. His debut collection, War Reporter, published by CB Editions in London and by Hanging Loose Press in Brooklyn, received the 2013 Fenton Aldeburgh First Collection Prize and was shortlisted for the 2013 Forward Foundation's Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection, both in the UK. In 2014 O'Brien was the winner of the Troubadour International Poetry Prize. His poems, plays and essays have appeared internationally in journals, magazines, and newspapers including 5 AM, 10Tal, 14 Magazine, 32 Poems, Ambit, America, The American Scholar, American Theatre, And Other Poems, Bad Lilies, Bare Fiction, Blackbird, Bennington Review, Birmingham Poetry Review, Briar Cliff Review, Cellpoems, Cincinnati Review, Cortland Review, Crab Orchard Review, Cyphers, The Dark Horse, Esquire, Event, Exacting Clam, Fenland Poetry Journal, The Fiddlehead, Geist Magazine, Grain Magazine, Greensboro Review, The Guardian, Hopkins Review, Hanging Loose, The Interpreter's House, Laurel Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, Linebreak, Literary Hub, Magma Poetry, Malahat Review, Missouri Review, The Moth, New England Review, The New York Times, Nimrod, North American Review, Northwest Review, The Paris Review Daily, Plume, Poet Lore, Poetry Birmingham Literary Journal, Poetry Ireland, Poetry London, Poetry Review, Poetry Salzburg Review, Poetry Wales, The Rialto, Saint Ann's Review, Salamander, Sewanee Review, Smartish Pace, Smoke, South Carolina Review, The Southern Review, Southwest Review, Southword, St. Petersburg Review, The Stage, Stand, The Stinging Fly, storySouth, Sugar House Review, Sunday Times (London), Tampa Review, The Times Literary Supplement, Under the Radar, upstreet, War, Literature & the Arts, The Washington Post, The White Review, Wild Court, Witness, Yale Review, and ZYZZYVA. 

O'Brien wrote the libretti for Jonathan Berger's Visitations: Theotokia & The War Reporter, two chamber operas commissioned by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Mellon Foundation for Stanford Live. Visitations: Theotokia & The War Reporter premiered at Bing Concert Hall at Stanford University and at the Prototype Festival in NYC, directed by Rinde Eckert, performed by New York Polyphony and Mellissa Hughes, and produced by Beth Morrison Projects. An earlier version of Theotokia premiered at the Spoleto Festival USA, performed by Dawn Upshaw.  

Previous off-Broadway and regional world premieres include The Cherry Sisters Revisited (Humana Festival, Actors’ Theatre of Louisville, directed by Andrew Leynse, original music by Michael Friedman), The Dear Boy (Second Stage Theatre, Michael John Garcés), The Voyage of the Carcass (SoHo Playhouse; Page 73 Productions, Alyse Rothman), Moving Picture (Williamstown Theatre Festival, Darko Tresnjak), The House in Hydesville (Geva Theatre Center, Skip Greer), Key West (Geva Theatre Center, Skip Greer), Kandahar to Canada (Ensemble Studio Theatre, Mark Armstrong), Am Lit (Ensemble Studio Theatre, Kevin Confoy), The Angel in the Trees (Production Company, Mark Armstrong), and Lamarck (Perishable Theatre, Mike Baron).

O’Brien's plays have been developed at many theaters and arts organizations including the New Harmony Project, O’Neill Playwrights Conference, the Orchard Project, Lincoln Center Directors’ Lab, PlayLabs at the Playwrights' Center, JAW Festival at Portland Center Stage, Colorado New Plays Festival, Sundance Theatre Lab, Primary Stages, Atlantic Theater Company, Roundabout Theatre Company, American Conservatory Theatre, New York Theatre Workshop, Magic Theatre, The Play Company, Rattlestick, The Lark, and Manhattan Theatre Club, where he was a playwright-in-residence. He has received commissions from theaters such as the Lucille Lortel Theatre, Center Theatre Group, Ensemble Studio Theatre / Sloan Foundation, Geva Theatre Center, Manhattan Theatre Club, Oregon Shakespeare Festival / American Revolutions, The Playwrights' Center's National Residency & Commission, Portland Center Stage, The Public Theater, Trinity Repertory Company, and Williamstown Theatre Festival; and residencies and fellowships from the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Center, Princeton University's Hodder Fellowship, Yaddo, a Sundance Institute Time Warner Storytelling Fellowship, a TCG Future Collaborations Grant, a James Merrill House Residency, the Djerassi Fellowship in Playwriting at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the Tennessee Williams Playwright-in-residence at The University of the South (Sewanee), the Ucross Foundation, and the Thomas J. Watson Fellowship. Awards include the Osborn Award for an Emerging Playwright by the American Theatre Critics Association, the Kennedy Center’s Mark Twain Comedy Playwriting Award, the National Student Playwriting Award, and the National AIDS Award for Playwriting (Kennedy Center / ACTF). His plays are published by Samuel French (Concord Theatricals), Oberon Modern Plays (Methuen / Bloomsbury), Broadway Play Publishing, Playscripts, Dramatic Publishing, Salamander Street (UK), and in numerous anthologies and literary magazines. 

O'Brien has taught playwriting at colleges and universities including Princeton University, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, The University of the South (Sewanee), University of Wisconsin-Madison, SUNY Purchase, Grinnell College, Occidental College, the Goddard College MFA Program, and in his private workshop in New York City. He holds a BA in English & Theatre from Middlebury College (Phi Beta Kappa, summa cum laude) and an MFA in Playwriting & Fiction from Brown University, graduating with High Honors. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, actor, writer, and producer Jessica St. Clair, and their daughter Isobel.