The Creative Nonfiction Podcast with Brendan O'Meara

"You don't have to go to the far ends of the earth, but I'm willing to do that for you, and tell you what I found," says Susan Orlean, bestselling author of several books, including her latest, Joyride: A Memoir.

Look who’s back! It’s Susan Orlean, author of the memoir Joyride about her roller coaster career as a writer and journalist spanning decades from her time at Willamette Weekly here in Oregon to the summit of The New Yorker, from her first book Saturday Night to reaching bestseller heights with The Orchid Thief, Rin Tin Tin...

"You never know what insight or information you're going to glean from someone, and so I want to be open to surprises. And not have any preconceived notions of what, who this person is, what they're going to tell me, imposing my own values, beliefs, whatever on them, because it's all a discovery," says Pulitzer Prize-winner Barry Meier, whose piece "You Can Run" appears in The Atavist Magazine.

Barry Meier is here for another Atavistian chat! Yeah, these have not come out in as timely a manner as I had hoped. The late delay of the “revived” one...

"I always think, 'Jesus, this person could be reading War and Peace, and they picked up this dopey little book.' You know what I mean? So the best thing I could do is be interesting or helpful. I can't be boring, and I've got to try to be helpful," says Austin Kleon, author of Don't Call It Art: 10 Ways to Create Like a Kid Again.

What a pleasure to welcome back Austin Kleon to the show to chat up his new book, his first in seven years, Don’t Call It Art: 10 Ways to Create Like a...

"Maybe your first images are some bulked up organism, or whatever. Then there's that kind of like sinewy strength that you see in like middleweight fighters. Roberto Duran comes to mind as the epiphany, like a super powerful, sinewy guy, right? And so I think that's what we're talking about too, is just those different forms of power, economy is really seductive to me now," says Maccabee Montandon, whose piece on his brother Asher is featured as a "revived" Atavist story.

The factory is running behind here at CNF Pod HQ, but we’ve got the first of...

"They want the secret, and the secret is little and often over the long haul," says Dan John, author of several books on strength and fitness, most recently The Fitness Forge: Master Coaching Tools that Build Real Strength.

Today we’ve got a bit of a curve ball, a backdoor slider, but not really. It’s Dan John, who is something of a Swiss army knife of wisdom and kindness and strength and conditioning. He’s been a long time strength coach and a master communicator of how to get real-life strong, not influencer, flash-in-the-pan strong, the kind o...

"It all has to come from within. So we each have to be in conversation with ourselves and with the work. It's really a relationship, not a project," says Ramona Ausubel, author of Unstuck: A Writer's Guide.

Today we have Ramona Ausubel, author of Unstuck: A Writer’s Guide. It’s published by Tin House.

Ramona’s curriculum vitae is pretty dope. She’s the author of the novels The Last Animal, Sons and Daughters of East and Plenty and No One is Here Except All of Us and the craft book Unstuck: 101 Doorways Leading from the...

"I say this all the time, and I'll say it again: the truth is a block of wood, and I know the sculpture I carve out of that block of wood looks different than the sculpture my mother carves out of that block of wood, right? But the truth — the block of wood — is what what happens, but the art we make out of that is up to us," says Isaac Fitzgerald, author of American Rambler: Walking the Trail of Johnny Appleseed.

We’ve got Isaac Fitzgerald returning to the podcast. He’s going to be at Powells...

"This is also me saying here's a literary reading of the universe through physics. There's a way you can read The Edge of Space-Time as me  doing close-reading for a few 100 pages. I'm close-reading equations. I'm close-reading Dirac. I'm close-reading Hawking and Ellis, but it's all different versions of a literary practice," says Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, author of The Edge of Space-Time: Particles, Poetry, and the Cosmic Dream Boogie (Pantheon Books).

Coming at you at the speed of sound, CNFers, with Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, who is the author of The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and D...

"I'm very comfortable not writing perfectly. I think a lot of writers have difficulty writing because they can be such good editors that there's almost this like, inherent need of sometimes rereading the same chapter over and over again and trying to make it perfect. And so I think, for me, I'm  very comfortable with the idea of, like, let me just get stuff on paper," says Mary Cain, author of This is Not About Running: A Memoir.

It’s Mary Cain! She’s @runmarycain on Instagram and she serves on the board of The Army of Survi...

"In the case of being a storyteller, I keep a document that I call my nonfiction compost pile. I keep little snippets of things that I've heard but it didn't really dive deeper into it. When you have other things to fall back on, it's easier to to pivot and say, 'Okay, this one didn't work out.' If you really believe in a story, you're going to find somebody else who believes in it too," says Nick Davidson, whose "Big Game" is this month's featured Atavist story.

We’ve got Nick Davidson (@nickgdavidson on IG) returning to...

"The Chronology of Water story was an 11-page story written in tiny fragments. And the MFA program I was in, they told me, that's not a story. It's a poem or something. It's a list of fragments. I'm like, 'Fuck you!' My whole enterprise has been to trouble the edges," says Lidia Yuknavitch, bestselling author of several books, most recently a memoir titled Reading the Waves.

Lidia Yuknavitch makes her thrilling return to the podcast, this a live recording of the show at Gratitude Brewing in Eugene in partnership with the revival of the Northwest Review...

“Not to confuse journalism with newspapers. Newspapers are one set of communication methods. But it's certainly not the only one. If they have the right mindset, and that's what I try to get them to do, there are so many more opportunities. You can go out and do a podcast, or you can do a newsletter. You can't think of it as I need to work at The New York Times. You have to think of it as I need — I need — to tell stories, and I've got this curiosity.”

Anthony DePalma is a journalist and professor at Colum...

"When I was writing the book, I used a lot of my interest in art criticism and nature writing to get cross pollinate into my sports writing. And I really try not to fall into a rut and just read only adjacent to my own subject or my own field," says Giri Nathan, author of Changeover: A Young Rivalry and a New Era of Men’s Tennis.

Today we have Giri Nathan (@giricube on IG), he is a staff writer/cofounder of Defector and the author of Changeover: A Young Rivalry and a New Era of Men’s Te...

"I think, like all writers, I will feel an itch that I have to scratch. There will be an idea in my head that I've got to get down on paper, whether I follow through with it or not," says R. Renee Hess, author of Blackness is a Gift I Can Give Her: On Race, Community, and Black Women in Hockey.

Who do we have this week? It’s R. Renee Hess, but you can all her Renee, of Black Girl Hockey Club. She wrote the essay collection Blackness is a Gift I can Give Her: On Ra...

"I'm always calibrating when I'm interviewing somebody, like, how much of a prompt are they going to need, and what is what is going to get something out of them?" — Stephen Wood, whose Buffalo Raiders piece appears in The Atavist Magazine.

What is the meaning of this Wednesday podcast! Middle of the week! It’s hump day, this holy day! It’s April 1st, is this some kind of joke! NO! Point being, it’s that Atavistian time of the month and I’m trying to get back to making the Atavist pod an extra pod, not just anoth...

"You can't go and find all of our stories. You can't just click a button and and be served up. You really have to appreciate them in person by holding the magazine in your hands, and that, to me, makes it more special," says Laura LeBleu, co-founder of Geezer Magazine.

It’s Laura LeBleu and Paul von Zielbauer, the founders of Geezer Magazine, a new, print-only magazine exploring the Gen-X aging experience. It’s a killer experience. Issue 1 came out several months ago and it’s this 11x15-inch-sized thing and it has pieces by Kim Cross and To...

"Those people who shaped the people are often more important than the subject, because they have insight into this young person that they were working with. It's crucial," says Keith O'Brien, bestselling author of Heartland: A Forgotten Place, an Impossible Dream, and the Miracle of Larry Bird.

Today we have Keith O’Brien, author of five books, including his latest book Heartland: A forgotten Place, an Impossible Dream, and the Miracle of Larry Bird. It’s published by Atria Books.

It’s a lean, propulsive biography framed as an origin story of Larry Bird before he wen...

"A book is not a long magazine article, and it took me a long, long time to understand that, to even understand what it means. It's something that you can say, but you have to live it to understand it," says Tom Junod, author of the memoir In the Days of My Youth I Was Told What It Means to be a Man.

Wow, look who visited the digital CNF Pod HQ: It’s Tom Junod.

Listen, I don’t have all day to sing the praises and list the back-of-the-baseball-card details of Tom’s illust...

"The worst thing you can do is pitch a topic, not a story. You start with a topic. I like to talk to a few people before I write a pitch, which can be difficult because people you're asking to talk to don't know where it's going. I just look for topics that interest me first, and I dig down to an expert, and then from the expert, I try and find individual stories within that," says Peter Ward, whose "Master and Commander" appeared in The Atavist Magazine.

It’s that Atavistian time of the month, so th...

"Come to editors with solutions, not with problems. A lot of young freelance writers will be like, 'Hey, hook me up with this editor. Do this and do that.' And I'm like, 'I can connect you, but you better have pitches. If you don't come with the idea you're just a problem,'" says Tony Rehagen, a long-time freelance writer.

Seth Wickersham put me in touch with a colleague of his, someone he went to grad school with by the name of Tony Rehagen. Now, he’s a special kind of freelancer in that he’s a gr...

"I wanted to keep reporting, and I'm like, it's not ready yet. And [a friend] reminded me over and over that this is a sales pitch. It's a proposal. The agents and publishers just want to know you can put a story together and tell a story that's longer than 2,000 words, and that there's some narrative arc to it," says Melanie D.G. Kaplan, author of Lab Dog: A Beagle and His Human Investigate the Surprising World of Animal Research (Hachette).

Today we have Melanie DG Kaplan, author of Lab Dog. Not gonna lie, if you’re an...

"A certain sort of dogged obsessiveness seems to help. I remember hearing Tobias Wolfe speak once that talent is wonderful  and widely distributed on Earth, but sitting down and putting in the hours is where it's at," says Mary Margaret Alvarado, who wrote "That's Somebody's Son" for The Atavist.

It’s a little later than planned, but here we feature Mary Margaret Alvarado’s piece for The Atavist Magazine titled “That’s Somebody’s Son: Three Mothers, One Struggle: saving their children with schizophrenia.” It’s a piece that that Mia, as Mary Margaret goes by, pitched more than a yea...

"To be a good writer, you have to really get into the visceral parts of the experience, right? You have to bring someone into that experience with you, which requires you to go back and understand every detail, every memory, all the visceral aspects of the experience, the sounds, the smells, everything that was happening," says Jane Marie Chen, author of Like a Wave We Break.

Today we have Jane Marie Chen, author of Like a Wave We Break: A memoir of Falling Apart and Finding Myself. It’s published by Harmony. It’s a book whose ance...

"My teenage daughter looked at me. She said, 'Oh, Dad, you should put that in a folder called nobody cares.' Okay, not everything I learn will be in this book. And then the question became, 'What is Lin-Manuel learning from this story?' And if he's not learning anything from it, even if it's fun, it's got to go in the deleted scenes," says Daniel Pollack-Pelzner, author of Lin-Manuel Miranda: The Education of an Artist (Simon & Schuster).

Daniel Pollack-Pelzner, the Notorius DPP, is charismatic as he is brilliant. Maybe some of that seasoning rubbed off on...

"Characters make books. Why are these guys in opposition? And were they actually really? How can you be in opposition with someone you never met? How can you be in opposition with somebody who's essentially sharing the same plight you're sharing in the country? And that brings in the other character. It's Branch Rickey. Branch Rickey is the puppet master of this entire book. Branch Rickey is the puppet master of that entire period," says Howard Bryant, author of Kings and Pawns: Jackie Robinson and Paul Robeson in America.

We’ve got Howard Bryant (@howardbryantbooks) back on th...

"I spent several months  trying to narrow down the cast. I had access to so many people with interesting stories. But what [my agent] said to me over and over again was, 'narrative arc, narrative arc,' all the time. What he needed to know in order to sell the book was like, 'Where does this book start? And if you can't tell me where it ends, at least tell me what are the ups and downs? What's gonna happen along the way?" says Alison Lyn Miller, author of Rough House: A Father, a Son, and the Pursuit of P...

"Practically speaking, mostly what I'm doing is I'm  writing in a hotel room and then writing in the taxi, and then if the TSA queue is long, I might whip my laptop out and balance it on the stanchion and do some more writing, and then get on the other side and write in the lounge and then write on the plane, and whether that means that the laptop's nearly vertical because I'm on a discount airline with with terrible seat pitch, just writing. And so that's it, right? What my real practice is ... I just goddamn write," says C...

"I feel like many of us can relate to that, like, that's the trough of despair, right? Like, that moment where you're energetic optimism, diving in, and then, like, that's the wall of regret, where you're like, 'What was I thinking? This is not a story,'" says Alexandra Marvar, whose piece on Lummie Jenkins was revived by The Atavist.

Today we Alex Marvar, this month’s featured Atavist writer, but this is something of a twist. Seyward Darby, who we will hear from in a sec, has launched an initiative called “Revived.” The idea being to resurr...

"We always were having conversations about, if we can't solve it, what then? What is this about? Why isn't it solved? And what is our job? Is the job of a journalist to solve crimes? No, it's to document. So what are we documenting? We're documenting what had to happen for there to be no answer in a situation where there should be an answer," says Leah Sottile, reporter, writer, Hush.

"Sometimes making yourself uncomfortable is the way to find new creativity, or to challenge yourself to find a smart idea within that," says Ryan Haas, reporter...

"You're constantly asking lean, open, neutral questions that start broad and then narrow, and you're asking more lean, open, neutral questions based on their answers. When you do that, it tells the subjects that you're actually listening to them very intensely, and you're asking questions based on the things that they say. And that accelerates trust and intimacy, I think, in a better way than kind of betting on your personality," says Seth Wickersham, the bestselling author of American Kings: A Biography of the Quarterback and an ESPN.com senior writer.

Seth Wickersham is back. He is...

"I will always go back to the well, and I will write until I die," says Jason Brown, author of Character Witness.

Jason Brown is here. He is a brilliant short story writer and the author of the memoir Character Witness (University of Nebraska Press). It’s an incredible book and we recorded this conversation at the end of October as the fourth and final LIVE podcast of the year at Gratitude Brewing here in Eugene. 

Jason, as luck would have it, teaches at the University of Oregon in its writing department, forging the young min...

"Take pride in your rejections. It's a tough industry for putting yourself out there. You're like, doing a ton of work up front, not knowing if anyone will be interested in it. It's very easy to feel deflated about it. Your rejections are reaching for things that maybe aren't easy reaches," says Christa Hillstrom, writer of 14,445 and Counting for The Atavist.

It’s that Atavistian time of the month. Not much by way of spoilers, but you know you’re in for a double dose of CNFin’  insights as we will hear from editor-in-chief Seyward Darby and, of cour...

"It's not actually about the questions you ask. It's about shutting up," says Julian Brave NoiseCat, author of We Survived the Night.

It’s episode 501 with Julian Brave NoiseCat, author of the memoir We Survived the Night. It’s published by Knopf. It’s a pretty spectacular debut and we have a lively chat about it and the writing and structuring of it. Julian is a writer, filmmaker, powwow dancer, and student of Salish art and history. 

Julian, man, what a cool dude. He really came to play ball, which is fun for me. His memoir...

"Anything beats writing. Writing is tough," says John McPhee, staff writer for The New Yorker and author of more than thirty books of nonfiction.

Hey CNFers, this is Episode 500 of The Creative Nonfiction Podcast, the show where I speak to tellers of true tales about the true tales they tell. There are kilometer stones like 100, 200, 300, and 400, but this one, this is a milestone and it features the writer and journalist who made me want to write narrative nonfiction in the first place: John McPhee.

John is a titan, a soft-spoken titan. He is the author...

"You start to wonder was it all worth it? Or what's the point in trying to do it again? You know, if there's going to be more disappointment in the future. I think it is something that you know probably just changes as you go on, regardless, right? I want to get that second book under my belt so it's not all just on this one, this one baby, you know?" says Maggie Mertens.

Maggie is the author of Better, Faster, Farther: How Running Changed Everything We Know About Women (Algonquin Books). It’s a brilliant book th...

"I have this desire to write as a novelist might write but write nonfiction," says Sasha Bonét, the author of The Waterbearers: A Memoir of Mothers and Daughters (Knopf).

Today we have the brilliant writer, the brilliant mind, Sasha Bonét, author of The Waterbearers: A Memoir of Mothers and Daughters. This book is a masterpiece that chronicles the matriarchal lineage of Sasha’s family, and the pain, and the struggle, and the triumph of will, of the slow, methodical, generational march forward and the residue of generational trauma, what we can outrun and we can neve...

"I kinda hate it when people say writing is fun," says Jack Rodolico, author The Atavist original "The Blue Book Burglar."

Today we feature Jack Rodolico, who is a bit of an audio maven, but he comes to us hot off the Atavist presses to talk about "The Blue Book Burglar: The Social Register was a who’s who of America’s rich and powerful— the heirs of robber barons, scions of political dynasties, and descendants of Mayflower passengers. It was also the perfect hit list for the country’s hardest-working art thief."

It’s a fun, rol...

“So much misery. It is so much misery. It is so hard. It's not natural, locking yourself in your room for three years to focus on one person is not mentally healthy. Leigh Montville, great, great writer, said to me years ago, he's like, ‘It's an unnatural thing. You spend two years in a hole to come out for two weeks, you know?’” — Jeff Pearlman, author of Only God Can Judge Me.

Today we have Jeff Pearlman returning to the show to talk about his 11th book, his latest book, Only God Can Judge Me: The Many Lives of T...

"When I came in [to Longreads], I didn't come in and say, I think we need to grow aggressively. I said, 'Let's figure out who we are. Let's figure out what other people aren't doing, that we do , and that we can do better.' And so the only real thing that changed when I first came in was to try to make the editors known quantities," says Peter Rubin, head of  publishing at Automattic, where he works primarily with Longreads, but also The Atavist Magazine.

Today we have Peter Rubin. He’s on the pod to tal...

"As a reader, if I were a fan reading this book, I want the good, the bad and the ugly. I want you to rip the band aid off and tell the truth. Because, from my from my experience, I've read a lot of memoirs that are super boring and just fluff," says Jeremy X. Wagner, co-author of Curtis Duffy's Fireproof: Memoir of a Chef (Dead Sky Publishing).

We have Jeremy X. Wagner on the show today. This dude is a stone-cold badass and the co-author/ghost writer of Fireproof: Memoir of a Chef (Dead Sky Publishing...