A Story That Happens: On Playwriting, Childhood, & Other Traumas

Drawing on O’Brien’s experience of cancer and of childhood abuse, and on his ongoing collaboration with a war reporter, the four essays in A Story that Happens—first written as craft lectures for the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and the US Air Force Academy—offer hard-won insights into what stories are for and the reasons why, "afraid and hopeful," we begin to tell them.

REVIEWS

“Part memoir, part philosophy, part pragmatic advice for young writers, [these essays] read like a master class in surviving through art.”

—Margaret Gray, Los Angeles Times

“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.’”

—Alice Jolly, Times Literary Supplement

"Subtly weaving between sometimes harrowing personal reminiscences and perceptive and astute lessons on the art of dramatic writing, the book is a quiet revelation.”

―Caridad Svich, Contemporary Theatre Review

“A powerful meditation on being a husband, a father, and a human while dealing with the very real possibility that it could all come to an end.”

—Ryan Buxton, Katie Couric Media

“All the essays were written during the tumultuous Trump years, a period of bombastic rage, where the truth was not only clouded but disrespected . . . O'Brien does an unforgettable job accompanying the reader through the prism of his life experiences, offering more than mere lessons.”

—Jonas Schwartz-Owen, Broadway World

“O’Brien’s books are raised far above the run of subjective accounts of recovery. Not once does he beg for pity or trumpet his family’s remarkable defeat of the odds . . . But where the books most fully succeed are as uneasy and compelling irruptions of American conscience.”

―James Peake, Wild Court

“A Story That Happens is filled with exquisitely observed insights into the writing process as well as how we make sense of our lives. Like Annie Dillard’s The Writing Life and Anne Lamott’s Bird By Bird, this is a book that grapples with big, existential questions while imparting valuable information about the craft of writing. It is also a guide to surviving catastrophe, be it cancer or family trauma, and living to tell the tale.”

—Naomi Iizuka

“Emotionally raw and intellectually profound”

—Robyn Goodman

“This book is packed with beautiful, bracing, searching honesty, teeming with wisdom and inspiration.”

—Bill Rauch, Artistic Director, Perelman Performing Arts Center at the World Trade Center