Matthew O'Brien

Matthew O'Brien (born in 1970) is an American author, journalist, editor and teacher who writes about the seedier side of Las Vegas. His most well-known work is the nonfiction book Beneath the Neon, which documents the homeless population living in the underground flood channels of the Las Vegas Valley. He lived in Las Vegas from 1997 to 2017. Early life and education O'Brien, who grew up in the Atlanta, Georgia, area, graduated in 1988 from Decatur High School, where he was a shooting guard on the basketball team. He attended Georgia State University and was a member of the team that advanced to the 1991 NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament. He was also a member of the University of West Georgia's 1993-'94 team, which qualified for the NCAA Division II men's basketball tournament. O'Brien graduated from West Georgia with a Bachelor's degree in history. He taught English and in the Honors College at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where he earned a MFA in creative writing. Career He worked as a staff writer, news editor and managing editor of the alternative weekly Las Vegas CityLife from 2000 to 2008. While at the paper, he co-wrote two cover stories about exploring the underground flood channels of Las Vegas after reading about Timmy "TJ" Weber, who was suspected (and later convicted) of murdering his girlfriend and her son, raping her daughter and attempting to kill another son. Weber used the drains to evade the police. O'Brien discovered hundreds of homeless people living in the storm drains. His research about and interviews from inside the underground flood channels are detailed in his book Beneath the Neon: Life and Death in the Tunnels of Las Vegas, released in June 2007. This book has been reviewed or written about by several media outlets, including Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, Wired, Der Spiegel, Le Monde, and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Nightline, The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric, Al Jazeera, CNN, NPR, the BBC, the Associated Press and other national and international media outlets have done stories about the tunnels and the tunnel-dwellers.