It was recently announced, as I noted earlier, that Las Vegas Author Matthew O’Brien was named a recipient of the Silver Pen Award, an award given to Nevada writers for mid-career success.  Matt wins with David Philip Mullins while Waddie Mitchell is inducted into the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame.  I reviewed Matt’s book, My Week at the Blue Angel, earlier this year on our Website, where I describe it this way:

Actually, the book’s the full title is My Week at the Blue Angel: And Other Stories from the Storm Drains, Strip Clubs, and Trailer Parks of Las Vegas.  As the subtitle might suggest, it bills itself as a gritty, first-person take on the city that only ever gets glamorized in print and in other media, the city where a few get richer, a few get chewed up, and the majority are never the wiser about the true lifestyles of either.  In perhaps its boldest attempt to reinforce this billing, the book is dedicated to the great Gonzo reporter Hunter S. Thompson who was one of the first great American writers to cover the dark side of Sin City, and whose work has become the model for the new journalistic style in which O’Brien indulges.

This review will run in our forthcoming issue of The Nevada Review, by the way.  Matt has been writing in and about Las Vegas for years now, and this award is as deserved as it is timely.  We recently interviewed Matt on his books, his life, and his future plans after winning one of Nevada’s most prestigious awards.

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Where do you come from?  How did you come to Nevada?

I was born in Washington, D.C., and grew up in the Atlanta area. After college, stuck on a paper route (the Atlanta Journal-Constitution) and needing a change, I moved to Las Vegas with a friend. I’d never even visited the city, but it seemed like a cool place to set short stories and novels. (At the time, I was an aspiring writer.) I was also curious about the casino culture (blackjack, sports betting, etc.) and wanted to explore the West and Southwest. The plan was to stay for six months to a year. Fourteen years later …

How and when do you decide you wanted to be a writer?

I majored in history at the University of West Georgia and one of my final credits was a history of the French Revolution course. At the end of the semester, we had to write a 20-page paper on a French Revolution-related subject of our choice. I wrote about Napoleon Bonaparte’s exile on St. Helena. As usual, I waited till the night before the paper was due to start the writing and research. Well, Dr. Kennedy—tweed jacket, gray mustache and pipe—was not impressed, but he gave me a chance to rewrite the paper. I threw myself into it, got an A and my interest in writing and research was born.

Your book Beneath the Neon: Life and Death in the Tunnels of Las Vegas was sort of a breakout book for you.  Tell us about how the concept came about.

I read about a murderer who used the underground flood channels to evade the police. That got me curious about what he encountered in the tunnels, so I explored a few of them with my friend and fellow writer Josh Ellis. I then continued to explore the tunnels on my own, discovering myth, art galleries and hundreds of homeless people—a city beneath the city. Those explorations, which span from 2002 to 2006, are the narrative spine of Beneath the Neon.

Many people are talking about writing authentic Nevada being more about the things off the Vegas Strip and so on.  How does your book, which is about a very unique part of the city, fit into this literary effort?

Both of my books, Beneath the Neon and My Week at the Blue Angel, are set in off-the-beaten-path Vegas: storm drains, weekly motels, trailer parks, low-rent apartments, etc. It’s the side of the city I’m most interested in; I got bored with the strip malls and hotel-casinos pretty quickly. The Strip is the domain of out-of-town writers, because that’s where they spend most of their time. Locals try to avoid the Strip and, thus, avoid writing about it. They use it more as a backdrop.

How has your book been received outside of Las Vegas?

My books have been well received outside of Las Vegas. Clearly there’s an interest in the side of the city that most tourists (and many locals) aren’t familiar with. On Amazon.com, my books sell at a similar rate to the latest Vegas guidebooks and there has been international interest in the tunnels, Blue Angel Motel and other places that I write about. Much of the world is fascinated, even obsessed, with Las Vegas, and my books have, in some ways, benefitted from that.

Tell us about the non-profit and other social efforts that have sprung up since you brought up the issues mentioned in Beneath the Neon.

Part of the reason I wrote Beneath the Neon was to call attention to the fact that hundreds of men and women, teenagers to senior citizens, were living and dying in the tunnels. I hoped that a governmental department, nonprofit organization or someone else would do something to help these people, but it never really happened. So I founded a community project called Shine a Light, which, with charity organization HELP of Southern Nevada, provides housing, drug counseling and other services to the people in the drains. The project has been fairly successful. In two and a half years, it has helped house more than 80 people, many of whom are now clean, healthy and employed.

Your book My Week at the Blue Angel: And Other Stories from the Storm Drains, Strip Clubs, and Trailer Parks of Las Vegas has been well received as well. How did the concept for it come about?

When Beneath the Neon was published, a few people asked where they could read the two stories that served as background for the book. The stories, co-written by me and Josh and published in Las Vegas CityLife in 2002, can be found at the paper’s website. But I thought if I reworked the stories, incorporating some of the knowledge gained researching Beneath the Neon, they could sit well in a collection. I then decided to dig up and rework other stories I’d written that share the same themes—off-the-beaten-path Vegas, beauty in unlikely places, a voice for those not often heard in the city, etc.—and to write two original stories to fill out the collection. One of the original stories, “My Week at the Blue Angel,” turned out to be 19,000 words and the centerpiece of the collection.

You write an excellent piece about getting to interview and track Hunter S. Thompson through Vegas in that book.  How was it to interview one of the most meaningful contributors to literature in the last century?

Surreal. The process of getting the interview was a story itself and the actual interview was entertaining and enlightening, well worth the wait and being woken up in the middle of the night. He shared a lot of information and anecdotes about Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and his time in the city that I think have real academic value. Basically, he served as my tour guide as I searched for traces of him and his classic book in contemporary, disposable Las Vegas.

It was recently announced that you are one of two winners of the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame Silver Pen Award.  That’s quite an honor here in Nevada.  How does it feel to receive that recognition?

I’m flattered, of course, and looking forward to my trip to Reno for the Hall of Fame and Silver Pen ceremony on Nov. 17. I’ll read some of my work and sign books, so drop by and say hello and support a good cause (literature and the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame).

With two Nevada books under your belt, what are your future projects and plans?

I’m currently working on an experimental, recession-era novel—part fiction, part memoir, part journalism—set in the shadow of the Strip and am trying to take my writing in a more creative and less journalistic direction. I hope to continue to build and broaden the Shine a Light project. Also, I think I’m finally going to apply to MFA creative writing (fiction) programs, so there’s a chance I’ll be leaving Nevada next fall. If so, it will be with plenty of fond memories from the “Green Felt Jungle” and surrounding, unforgiving desert.