Darren O’Donnell was born in 1965 in Edmonton, Canada. He is a novelist, essayist, playwright, director, designer and performer. O’Donnell is founder and Artistic Director of Mammalian Diving Reflex, a research-art atelier dedicated to investigating the social sphere, and Research Director of The Tendency Group, a think tank and social policy laboratory. In addition to his artistic practice, O’Donnell is an Msci candidate in Urban Planning at the University of Toronto.

Recent publications include: Haircuts by Children and Other Evidence for a New Social Contract (2017), Social Acupuncture (2006), which argues for aesthetics of civic engagement, and Your Secrets Sleep with Me (2004), a novel about difference, love and the miraculous. His stage-based works include White Mice (1998), [boxhead] (2000), and All the Sex I’ve Ever Had (2012). In 2000, O’Donnell was awarded with the Pauline McGibbon Award for directing. Under his directorship, Mammalian won the 2010 Mayor's Arts Award for Youth, and his Mammalian Protocol for Collaborating with Children was awarded the Canadian Coalition for the Rights of Children Supporter Award in 2012.