Author
Danny O'Dea
Fiction about what people survive, what it costs them, and the stories they tell to live with it.
Forthcoming · September 22, 2026
Packages
A debut novel about the stories we tell to survive, and the ones that catch up with us anyway.
Set in a Southern college town, Packages follows Michael McKnight as he drifts through grief, desire, and moral gray areas alongside his friends. When unmarked packages start showing up at an off-campus house, Michael gets pulled into a secret that forces him to face what the people around him are capable of — and what he's chosen not to see.
Moving between past and present, the novel is part coming-of-age story and part reckoning, taking on masculinity, queerness, guilt, and the ways friendships and institutions let down the people who need them most.
2022 debut
The Last Man in Cleveland
An apocalypse built from ordinary lives — a road worker, a police officer, a health minister, a general — that collapses into one.
During the Olympic Games, a mysterious bat-borne illness starts to spread. A construction worker in Cleveland, a security officer chasing jewel thieves, Brazil's youngest health minister, and the general tasked with protecting the visiting U.S. president all have their own version of the story — none of them able to stop what's coming.
Narrated by "the Writer," the novella traces how the end of the world actually arrives: quietly, through people just trying to do their jobs, as the story narrows down to a single man left in Cleveland.
Events
Fall 2026 tour
- Sep 23 Blue Bird Bookshop Crozet, VA
- Sep 29 Solid State Books Washington, DC
- Oct 2 Word Bookstore Brooklyn, NY
- Oct 5 Epilogue Books Chapel Hill, NC
- Oct 7 Shelf Life Books Richmond, VA
- Oct 13 Book Passage San Francisco, CA
- Oct 15 North Figueroa Bookstore Los Angeles, CA
- Oct 20 William & Mary — Hayes Writer Series Williamsburg, VA
- Oct 24 Crozet Book Fest Crozet, VA
About
Danny O'Dea grew up in a small town on the outskirts of the Blue Ridge Mountains. He studied literature and politics before working in education and communications, and has long been drawn to folklore and the symbols people reach for to make sense of what's happened to them.
His work returns again and again to grief, masculinity, and the quiet violence of looking away — and the cost of the stories we tell ourselves to keep surviving.
His debut novella, The Last Man in Cleveland, was published in 2022. His debut novel, Packages, arrives from Rare Bird Books in September 2026. He lives in Charlottesville, Virginia, with his wife and their two dogs.
Contact