Writers on Writing: A Conversation with Dan O'Brien ‘96 and J. M. Tyree ‘95

Middlebury alums Dan O’Brien and J. M. Tyree return to the College having earned acclaim in creative writing since they began sharing their work with one another over thirty years ago as undergraduates. They are currently press-mates: Tyree has recently published his novella, The Haunted Screen with Deep Vellum, and O’Brien has published a memoir, From Scarsdale: A Childhood, and a collection of his plays, True Story: A Trilogy, with Dalkey Archive Press, an imprint of Deep Vellum. The authors will read selections from their new books, followed by a question and discussion period with the audience.

Dan O’Brien is a playwright, poet, and nonfiction writer whose recognition for playwriting includes a Guggenheim Fellowship, two PEN America Awards, the Horton Foote Prize, and for poetry the Fenton Aldeburgh First Collection Prize. Plays by O’Brien have premiered in London, off-Broadway, and at regional theaters including Second Stage Theatre, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Actors’ Theatre of Louisville, SoHo Playhouse, and the Gate Theatre. He has published five collections of poetry in the US and in the UK, including the prize-winning War Reporter, praised in The Guardian as “a masterpiece of truthfulness and feeling.” He has taught playwriting at Princeton University, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and elsewhere. Originally from New York, O’Brien lives in Los Angeles with his wife and daughter.

J. M. Tyree serves as editor-in-chief of Film Quarterly and as contributing editor of New England Review. He is the author or coauthor of seven books, including the fiction collection Our Secret Life in the Movies (with Michael McGriff), which was featured in NPR’s Best Books selection and described as “beautiful and devastating” by The Washington Post. He has written or co-written two of the BFI Film Classics books from the British Film Institute, and he has twice been invited to contribute an official critic’s ballot to Sight & Sound magazine’s once-per-decade Greatest Films Poll. His most recent book is the cine-novella The Haunted Screen. Tyree teaches as an associate professor in the Cinema Program at VCUarts.

Co-sponsored by The Academic Speaker Supplement Fund program, The Hirschfield Film Endowment and the Film and Media Culture Department, Axinn Center for the Humanities, New England Review, Committee on the Arts, Department of English