Key West

Dan O'Brien is an award-winning playwright, poet, librettist, and nonfiction writer. A former Guggenheim Fellow in Drama & Performance Art, his work has been produced Off-Broadway, regionally, and internationally. His play NEWTOWN premiered at Geva Theatre in 2024, directed by Elizabeth Williamson, and earned the Blanche and Irving Laurie Foundation Theatre Visions Fund Award. His acclaimed drama 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 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, co-produced with Royal & Derngate and directed by James Dacre. THE BODY OF AN AMERICAN was the winner of the Horton Foote Prize, the Edward M. Kennedy Prize, the PEN Center USA Award, the L. Arnold Weissberger Award, and was shortlisted for the Evening Standard's Charles Wintour Award in the UK. Other major works include THE HOUSE IN SCARSDALE: A MEMOIR FOR THE STAGE, winner of the PEN America Award, which received its world premiere at Boston Court Pasadena, directed by Michael Michetti. Many of his plays are collected in Dan O'Brien: Plays One (Bloomsbury) and True Story: A Trilogy (Dalkey Archive Press). He also wrote the libretti for Jonathan Berger's chamber operas VISITATIONS: THEOTOKIA & THE WAR REPORTER, commissioned by Stanford Live at Stanford University, with funding in part by the NEA, and directed by Rinde Eckert. O'Brien has taught playwriting at Princeton, the Sewanee Writers' Conference, and many other colleges and universities. He lives in Los Angeles.