Tim O'Brien was born in Austin, Minnesota, and when he was twelve his family moved to Worthington, Minnesota. Worthignton had a huge influence on his imagination and early development as an author. The town serves as the setting for some of his stories, most in particular The Things They Carried.
O'Brien earned is BA in Political Science from Macalester College. That same year O'Brien was drafted into the United States Army and was sent to Vietnam. He served in Vietnam from 1968-1970 in the 3rd Platoon, Company A, 5th Battalion, 23rd Infantry Division.
After completeing his tour of duty, he went to graduate school at Harvard University where he rieceved an internship at the Washington Post. In 1973 his writing career was launched with his release of If I Die in a Combat Zone, Box Me Up and Ship Me Home, which was about his war experiences.
A main attribute of O'Briens word is the blur between fiction and reality, a term labeled Verisimilitude . O'Brien's work contains actual details of the situations be experienced and uses a unique technique that encompasses his conscious ,explicit, and metafictional literary techniques.
O'Brien lives in cetnral Texas and teaches full-time every other year at Texas State University- San Marcos. He won the National Book Award for Going After Cacciato in 1979. He also won the James Fenimore Copper Prize for Best Historical Fiction for his novel In the Lake of the Woods in 1995.
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