The Men Behind the Mirror: An Interview with Scott O’Connor

Scott O’Connor, Interviewed by Dani Hedlund

Scott O’Connor grew up with a reputation as the kid who was always telling stories, but it wasn’t until his early twenties that he began his professional writing aspirations. Drawn first to the burgeoning film industry, he soon discovered that the scripts he wrote had moved beyond the limitations of low-budget film making, leaving them unfulfilled without the camera to tell the other half of the story. It was at this point that he decided to take complete control of his creations, propelling his career into the world of literature. From that decision was born his first major project, the novella Among Wolves, which not only opened his world to professional writing but also, as he told TBL, “fooled him into thinking he could write a novel.” And so it was that seven years later, O’Connor’s debut, Untouchable, hit the shelves, generating a flood of positive criticism, including the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award. His new novel, Half World, was published by Simon & Schuster in February, 2014.

After the publication of her first novel at the age of eighteen, Dani Hedlund founded the international literary nonprofit Brink Literacy Project (formerly Tethered by Letters). Over the course of the last decade, Brink has grown into one of the largest independently-funded literary nonprofits in the nation, with bases across the US, UK, and Southeast Asia. She is also the founder and Editor-in-Chief of F(r)iction, an art and literary collection specializing in boundary-defying work. Since its inception in 2015, F(r)iction has risen to critical acclaim, becoming one of the fastest growing literary journals in the world. In her ever-elusive free time, Dani lectures about the ins and outs of the publishing industry, writes very weird fiction, and runs a strange little board game company called Bad Hipster Games.