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Tim O’Brien
Novelist
Tim O'Brien is an American novelist. His books include the National Book Award-winning "Going After Cacciato" (1978), as well as his debut novel, "If I Die in a Combat Zone, Box Me Up and Ship Me Home" (1973); his most recent novel, "July, July" (2002); and the Pulitzer Prize finalist "The Things They Carried" (1990), a combination novel/short story collection/memoir based on his experiences in the Vietnam War. A special twentieth anniversary edition of "The Things They Carried" was released by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2010.
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5 min
Part of a writer’s job is to puncture our clichés about subjects like love and war with irony, edge, and ridicule.
6 min
How to convey the horror of war to someone who’s never witnessed it? It’s language, not the pain of remembering, that makes the task so hard.
5 min
Two decades after his masterpiece, the author reflects on war, fatherhood, and the passage of time that’s made him feel like “a stranger to the person who wrote that book.”
2 min
Writing never gets easier, but there are certain mistakes writers can learn to avoid.
46 min
A conversation with the National Book Award-winning writer.