Perry O'Brien
Perry O’Brien served as a medic in Afghanistan with the 82nd Airborne Division and was discharged as a conscientious objector in 2004. For several years he ran peace-out.com, a website providing support for other soldiers seeking to become conscientious objectors. He has been an active member of Iraq Veterans Against the War, and was a key organizer of Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2008 he began working at CIR/SEIU, a union of physicians-in-training, where he became the National Organizing Director.
His first novel is forthcoming from Random House, and he is the co-author of After Gandhi: 100 Years of Nonviolent Resistance. Other work has appeared in the
The New York Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, Huffington Post, The Nation, and the literary anthology Fire and Forget: Short Stories from the Long War.
Perry has a BA in Government from Cornell University, and an MFA in Creative Writing from New York University.
Twitter: Perry_OB