Stewart O'Nan

Stewart O'Nan, born February 4, 1961, is an American novelist whose work grew out of an unusual mix of engineering, teaching, research, and close attention to ordinary lives. He was born to John Lee O'Nan II and Mary Ann O'Nan, née Smith, and was raised with his brother John in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where their father worked for Alcoa. O'Nan earned a B.S. in Aerospace Engineering from Boston University in 1983. While in Boston, he became a fan of the Red Sox, a loyalty that later found its way into his nonfiction.

On October 27, 1984, O'Nan married Trudy Anne Southwick, his high school sweetheart. They moved to Long Island, New York, where he worked as a test engineer for Grumman Aerospace Corporation in Bethpage from 1984 to 1988. Encouraged by his wife to pursue writing, he returned to college, earning an M.F.A. from Cornell University in 1992. Afterward, he and his family lived in Edmond, Oklahoma, and he taught at the University of Central Oklahoma and the University of New Mexico. From 1995 to 1998, he was writer-in-residence at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut.

O'Nan's first book, In the Walled City, was also his only short story collection, and it won the 1993 Drue Heinz Literature Prize. That same year, the manuscript for his first novel, Snow Angels, won the first Pirate's Alley Faulkner Prize for the Novel, helping him find a publisher. Snow Angels, based on the story “Finding Amy” from In the Walled City, was published in 1994 and later adapted into a 2007 film directed by David Gordon Green, starring Sam Rockwell and Kate Beckinsale.

His novels include The Names of the Dead, The Speed Queen, A World Away, A Prayer for the Dying, Everyday People, Wish You Were Here, Last Night at the Lobster, Emily, Alone, The Odds, West of Sunset, City of Secrets, Henry, Himself, and Ocean State. In 1996, Granta named him one of America’s Best Young Novelists. His 2015 novel West of Sunset follows the last days of F. Scott Fitzgerald in Los Angeles, after financial ruin, health problems, and his wife’s placement in an insane asylum. A Prayer for the Dying, based on his 1999 novel, was adapted for film, with Johnny Flynn and John C. Reilly, and premiered in February 2026 at the Berlin International Film Festival.

Research has been a steady part of O'Nan’s work. His work on The Names of the Dead led him to create and teach a class on Vietnam War memoirs as literature. For The Circus Fire, his 2000 nonfiction book, he placed an advertisement in The Hartford Courant and received many responses from survivors of the Hartford Circus fire. He also co-authored Faithful: Two Diehard Boston Red Sox Fans Chronicle the Historic 2004 Season with Stephen King, and said the luckiest thing that ever happened to him was becoming a Red Sox fan. His writing suggests a patient worker’s habits: keep the manuscript close, return to the last sentence, and stay ready for the next small opening. That practical faith in the sentence is one reason readers continue to find his work direct, human, and alive to the details of daily life.