Matthew O'Brien
| Matthew O'Brien | |
|---|---|
| Born | Washington, D.C. |
| Occupation | Author, editor, journalist, college instructor |
| Nationality |
 United States
|
| Genre | Creative nonfiction |
| Subject | Homelessness, Las Vegas Valley |
| Notable works |
Beneath the Neon My Week at the Blue Angel |
| Website | |
| www |
|
Matthew "Matt" O'Brien (born in Washington, D.C.) is an American author, journalist and college instructor best known for penning the nonfiction book Beneath the Neon about homeless people living underground in the Las Vegas Valley. He has lived in Las Vegas since 1997.
O'Brien, who grew up in the Atlanta, Georgia, area, graduated in 1988 from Decatur High School, where he was a point guard on the basketball team, and from the University of West Georgia in 1995. He teaches English at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where he earned a MFA in creative writing.
He was a staff writer, news editor and managing editor of the alternative weekly Las Vegas CityLife from 2000 to 2008. While at the paper, he co-wrote two cover stories about exploring the underground flood channels of Las Vegas after reading about Timmy "TJ" Weber, who was suspected (and later convicted) of murdering his girlfriend and her son, raping her daughter and attempting to kill another son. Weber used the drains to evade the police. In the storm drains, O'Brien discovered hundreds of homeless people living in them.
His adventures in the underground flood channels are detailed in his book Beneath the Neon: Life and Death in the Tunnels of Las Vegas, released in June 2007. This book has been reviewed or written about by more than 100 media outlets, including Publishers Weekly,Kirkus Reviews, Wired,Der Spiegel,Le Monde, and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Nightline, "The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric", Al Jazeera, CNN, NPR, the BBC, the Associated Press, and other national and international media outlets have done stories about the tunnels and the tunnel-dwellers.
CNN's Michael Cary went into the tunnels with O'Brien and described him as "an expert on the more than 300 miles of underground flood channels and its tunnel dwellers."
...
Wikipedia