Award-winning author Tim O'Brien (The Things They Carried, July, July) has incorporated his experience in Vietnam into several of his novels and short stories. Drafted into the U.S. Army in 1968 ...

The problem with unsuccessful stories is usually simple: they are boring, a consequence of the failure of imagination. To vividly imagine and to vividly render extraordinary human events, or ...

or extended family members generously helping out," O'Brien, the family-abolition author, told me. The segmentation of families can also "isolate vulnerable individuals, enabling abuse," Stephanie ...

Banjo duo Alison Brown and Steve Martin have tapped mandolin master and vocalist Tim O’Brien ... pulls of family and the road, plus I sing it really good,” O’Brien said of the track.