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“The Front Runner: The Life of Steve Prefontaine,” out now!

By Brendan O’Meara

“Elegant biography… O’Meara’s loving portrait also celebrates Prefontaine’s legacy off the field, most notably his campaign against the Amateur Athletic Union’s rules disqualifying athletes who attempted to monetize their success. Nimble and comprehensive, this is a stirring tribute to a generational runner gone too soon.” — Publisher’s Weekly [FULL REVIEW]

“Surging prose,” from LitHub.

Hey, CNFers, The Front Runner: The Life of Steve Prefontaine, is officially out. I’m experiencing all the feels, and I can’t wait for you to read it.

This is the link: https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-front-runner-brendan-omeara?variant=43044900962338

Episode 472: Melissa Febos and the Art of Personal Exploration with ‘The Dry Season’

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A mostly accurate transcript for Ep. 472¹

“As soon as I heard people refer to writers as actual people, I thought, ‘oh, my god, is that an option? Because I choose that option.’ And I just latched onto it immediately.” — Melissa Febos, from Ep. 472

Episode 471: The Cassidy Randall Residency at CNF Pod Continues!

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A mostly accurate transcript for Ep. 471¹

“I can’t imagine if somebody asked me to share these really vulnerable things and didn’t acknowledge that it’s a gift that that person is giving, and it’s not a gift to the writer. It’s a gift to everybody who will read it.” — Cassidy Randall, from Ep. 471

Episode 470: Megan Baxter is Into Rewilding Her Writing

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A mostly accurate transcript for Ep. 470¹.

“It’s also just confidence and knowing that it’s still there, and knowing that you are a writer when you are not writing.” — Megan Baxter, from Ep. 470

Sunday Funday: It’s Pub Week

By Brendan O’Meara

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I tend to overthink things. Like … if I start blogging, which I love, I get into my head that it needs to be on a regular day and it has to be this repeatable thing otherwise nobody’s gonna read it. That puts pressure on myself and I inevitably crash after doing it for a couple days or weeks. The exception being ye ol’ CNF Pod.¹

But I do love a good Sunday reading experience. Harkens back to my childhood when my dad would unpack The Boston Globe and chuck the comics at me. This was back in the day when you could legit throw your back out picking up the Sunday paper if you didn’t lift with your legs.

Episode 469: John O’Connor on the Meaning of Bigfoot

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A mostly accurate transcript for Ep. 469¹

“I don’t feel envy. I don’t think. Maybe in some deeper and maybe even more troubling psychological level. I do feel competition with people, competition over resources, trying to claim certain ideas, stake a claim to certain ideas before other people can, especially when you’re working with a subject that’s in the public sphere. You don’t have any personal, any real wider claim to something than somebody else. It can be nerve wracking.” — John O’Connor, from Ep. 469

Episode 468: Local Journalism and the Folly of Fame with Maggie Messitt

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Episode 467: How to Bounce Back from ‘Viscerally Negative’ Feedback with Will Bardenwerper

Friday, May 9, 2025

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Who’s on the docket for the Friday matinee, looks like it’s Will Bardenwerper, author of The Prisoner in His Palace: Saddam Hussein, His American Guards, and What History Leaves Unsaid and most recently, Homestand: Small Town Baseball and the Fight for the Soul of America (Doubleday).

The story takes us to Batavia, New York in the western part of the state not too far from Buffalo. Batavia used to be home to the minor league Muckdogs but was wiped out during Major League Baseball’s consolidation of dozens of minor league teams, teams that were often the beating hearts of so many communities. What took that team’s place was a wood-bat college baseball summer league similar to the Cape Cod League, but not quite as awash in talent.

Episode 466: Katie Goh on Issues of Identity and the Trappings of Mythology

Friday, May 9, 2025

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For Ep. 466 we’ve got Katie Goh (@katie_goh on IG), author of Foreign Fruit: A Personal History of the Orange. It’s published by Tin House. This is a book that blends memoir and biography: biography of a fruit, that is.

I didn’t tell Katie this, but John McPhee’s slim book Oranges was one of the seminal books that made me want to write narrative nonfiction, that and McPhee’s Survival of the Bark Canoe. Katie, who is of southeast Asian and northern Irish descent, the book tackles issues of identity, colonialism, capitalism, xenophobia and racism, still life art and mythology. It’s dense, it’s expansive, it’s a really fine book.

Episode 465: Miranda Green Searches for the Harm

Friday, May 2, 2025

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Hey CNFers, it’s the Atavistian time of the month, so there are some saucy details about this month’s story titled “All That Glitters: His alleged victims say he bribed New York Police Department officials, stole millions in diamonds, and persuaded Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Kim Kardahsian to shill for scam cryptocurrency. So why is Jona Rechnitz still free?“

This gives us a chance to speak with Miranda Green, (@randi_green) an investigative reporter, about this piece.

Episode 464: John Glionna is a Clown Who Makes Balloons That Kids Don’t Like

Friday, April 25, 2025

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We have John Glionna (@johnglionna) here today. Spoke to him in December 2024, so, you know, we’re making good time here at CNF Pod HQ.

For the people who follow up with me from like a week ago, I’m like, ‘you might want to get a burrito and a Pepsi Zero Sugar.’ John’s a fun guy, one of those great journalists cut from a different fabric, a pre-internet vintage. He spent 26 years at the LA Times and he’s the author of No Friday Night Lights: Reservation Football on the Edge of America (Bison Books). Except there’s not really much football in the book.

This story takes place in a small, secluded town of McDermitt, Nevada, on the border of Oregon and Nevada. The high school rarely has enough kids to field a team of eight or so players. If they play, they lose and they lose big. It’s the story about a town trying to keeps its nose above water. It’s a town abandoned by the mining-industry boom times of the the late 20th century. John’s story is one of resilience and pride, of losing but not being a loser.