Bullseye with Jesse Thorn is a production of MaximumFun.org and is distributed by NPR.

It's Bullseye, I'm Jesse Thorn. My first guests this week are Jessica St. Clair and

Dan O'Brien. Jessica is a comedy writer and performer. Alongside her real-life best pal,

Lenin Haram, she created and starred in playing house a really great sitcom that aired for

three seasons on USA. Dan O'Brien is her husband of 15 years. He works as a poet and playwright.

He's a former Guggenheim fellow whose work has been performed off Broadway and in London.

A few years back, Jessica discovered a lump in her breast. It didn't take long for doctors

to diagnose her with breast cancer and she very quickly started aggressive treatment. Then

just as she was starting to recover, doctors diagnosed Dan with stage 4 colon cancer that

had spread to his liver. I should mention that just before Jessica was diagnosed, the two

had had a child together. You'll hear more about their story in my interview with them

but needless to say, it was an intense and frightening time. As they recovered, that time

inspired their work. For Jessica, cancer became a central plotline in the third season of

playing house. For Dan, it became a book. In our cancers, Dan uses poetry to chronicle

the year and a half he and Jessica spent going to doctors, getting treatment, raising

their child. As you might have guessed, there's a lot of talk about cancer in this interview,

stuff about body parts and exams and all the pain and scariness that come with all that.

So if that is a sensitive subject for you, we want to let you know. Okay, we'll go all

that out of the way. My interview with Jessica St. Clair and Dan O'Brien.

Dan and Jessica, welcome to Bullseye. It's nice to have you on the show. Thank you so

much. A lot of big smiles right now. Don't worry. We'll get the cancer in a minute. The

two of you have been together a long time. Can you tell me how you met? Yeah, we were in

...