One-to-one with Dan O'Brien

Tuesday December 5th at 7pm UK time

Join American poet and playwright Dan O'Brien live online at his home in California for an evening (or morning) of poetry, prose and performance. This is the first time in over 150 gatherings that we've devoted an entire programme to one living author and that should come as no surprise - Dan is a swell bunch of guys. 

The programme will be in three parts, opening with prose poems from Survivor's Notebook, then the memoir From Scarsdale followed by a performance of extracts from Dan's forthcoming play Newtown, which will be published in March 2024 by CB editions. There will be time for questions from the audience.

If you're not already on the mailing list and would like to join the audience for this free event, please leave your email address in the comments section below and I'll be in touch.

This is the final programme in a year-long series of monthly gatherings called The Butcher's Dozen, which has featured some of the most original and exciting contemporary writers including Ariel Anderssen, Wes Brown, Kevin Boniface, Paul Griffiths, Lars Iyer, Todd McEwen and Faruk Séhič. (We'll be back for one more event on Thursday 28th December - so please keep that date in your diary.)

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Dan is an internationally produced and published playwright, poet, librettist, and nonfiction writer whose recognition in playwriting includes a Guggenheim Fellowship and two PEN America Awards. The Body of an American, O’Brien’s play about the Battle of Mogadishu and the haunting of war reporter Paul Watson, was co-produced off-Broadway at the Cherry Lane Theatre by Primary Stages and Hartford Stage (New York Times Critic’s Pick), at the Gate Theatre in London, and at various theaters around the UK and the US. The Body of an American received the Edward M. Kennedy Prize, the Horton Foote Prize, the Weissberger Award, and was shortlisted for an Evening Standard Award. 

O’Brien’s poetry collections are War Reporter (winner of the UK’s Fenton Aldeburgh Prize & shortlisted for the Forward Foundation’s Felix Dennis Prize), Scarsdale, New Life, Our Cancers, and his latest, Survivor’s Notebook. His memoir, From Scarsdale, and a trilogy of his docudramas, True Story, were published in 2023 by Dalkey Archive Press. 

In early 2024, Poetry London will publish a pamphlet of his poems, and CB Editions will publish his play-in-verse Newtown. O’Brien lives in Los Angeles with his wife, actor and writer Jessica St. Clair, and their daughter Isobel.

Recent and forthcoming publication

Survivor’s Notebook (poems) from Acre Books 

From Scarsdale: A Childhood (memoir) from Dalkey Archive Press 

True Story: A Trilogy (plays) from Dalkey Archive Press 

Newtown forthcoming from from CB Editions (London) in March 2024

Flying on Easter, a new pamphlet  from Poetry London (2024)

You can buy three of Dan's earlier poetry collections from his UK publisher CB editions here:

War Reporter  https://www.cbeditions.com/OBrien.html

Scarsdale        https://www.cbeditions.com/obrien2.html

New Life          https://www.cbeditions.com/obrien3.html