Her work has been published in The Cairo Review of Global Affairs, Guardian UK, Salon, The Daily Beast, and featured on the BBC, PBS Frontline, On The Media, and Public Radio International. She was shortlisted for the 2013 Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism in the UK. O'Brien is currently writing a story about the largest criminal investigation and prosecution ever conducted into a publisher and its sources, and their subversion of civilization and the rule of law.