O'Nan's first book, and only collection of short stories, In the Walled City, was awarded the 1993 Drue Heinz Literature Prize.[6] Many of the stories in that collection also originally appeared in publications such as Ascent (the short story "Econoline"), Columbia (the short story "The Third of July"), Jam To-Day (the short story "Mr Wu Thinks"), The Nebraska Review (the short story "Winter Haven), Northwest Review (the short story "The Finger"), The South Dakota Review (the short story "The Calling") and The Threepenny Review (the short story "Steak").
Novels
Also in 1993, O'Nan was able to find a publisher for his second book, and first novel, Snow Angels—based on the story "Finding Amy" from In the Walled City—when the manuscript earned him the first Pirate's Alley Faulkner Prize for the Novel, awarded by the Pirate's Alley Faulkner Society of New Orleans.[7]
In 1995, his family and he moved to Avon, Connecticut. He was a writer-in-residence and taught creative writing at Trinity College in nearby Hartford until 1997. The research he did for his novel The Names of the Dead led to the creation of a class that studied Vietnam War memoirs as a form of literature, which he also initially taught. In 1996, Granta named him one of America's Best Young Novelists.[8]
In a 2002 article, "Finding Time to Write," he wrote:
Very simple things like keeping the manuscript with you at all times. Always keep it with you. That way you can always go back to it. Doesn't have to be the whole manuscript. Another way to do this is to bring only the very last sentence that you worked on--where you left off, basically. Bring it with you on a sheet of paper or index card. Keep it on your person so that if you're running around the building where you're working, you take that five seconds to pull it out and look at it and say, "Okay, oh, maybe I'll do this with it. Maybe I'll do something else with it. Maybe I'll fix it there."[9]
In 2015, O'Nan released a novel entitled West of Sunset, about the last days of writer F. Scott Fitzgerald as he moves out to Los Angeles after being ruined financially and experiencing health problems, after his wife is put in an insane asylum.[11] Filmmaker James Ponsoldt has been in negotiations to write and direct a film adaptation of the book, with actors like Tom Hanks, Emily Watson and Alicia Vikander currently being attached.[12]
Nonfiction books
When he researched The Circus Fire, he advertised in The Hartford Courant and received many answers to his request for interviews with survivors of the Hartford Circus fire.[13]
In 2008, Lonely Road Books sold out its pre-orders for O'Nan's latest writing, a screenplay simply titled Poe. It is a dramatic retelling of the life of Edgar Allan Poe. The screenplay was released as a limited edition of 200 copies and as a lettered edition of 26 copies. It features a foreword by Roger Corman and frontispieces by Jill Bauman.
^Rausch, Andrew J. (5 February 2019). Perspectives on Stephen King : conversations with authors, experts and collaborators. Jefferson, North Carolina. ISBN978-1-4766-7417-9. OCLC1039671896.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
^Rausch, Andrew J. (5 February 2019). Perspectives on Stephen King : conversations with authors, experts and collaborators. Jefferson, North Carolina. ISBN978-1-4766-7417-9. OCLC1039671896.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
