Article Cover | Meryl Overrated

Article: Meryl, Overrated?

Not even close, as the screenwriter of The River Wild recalls.

A copy of an article by the author, published in the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine, May, 2017
Movies that aren’t based on original screenplays are often adapted from books, magazine articles or newspaper stories. Writers, when they stumble onto a good location or a good story or good characters—or sometimes some of each—have been known to milk the material for all it’s worth, writers being, um, writers. It’s only natural. Farmers have the same appreciation for a chicken that reliably lays eggs. My story is such an instance, and I offer it, selflessly, as a textbook example of how a writer will shamelessly try to wring as many eggs out of one chicken as he can....

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Article Cover | Reading at the Cork Midsummer Festival

Having the Craic in Cork

I was honored to read from the River Wild on the banks of the River Lee a week ago at the Cork Midsummer Arts Festival. It was something of a homecoming. My paternal grandfather, EJ, was born in Cork - and my second cousin Mick O'Neill, and his wife, fellow writer Mary O'Shea, joined the audience. Their son Steven was also there, as was his force-of-nature wife Jane Anne, who consults for the festival and was kind enough to wangle me a reading slot.

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