May 2023 – Home of The Creative Nonfiction Podcast

Episode 372: Anna Altman

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I try to break it down into sections, when you get the end of a 1,000, or 1,500 words, you’ve made it to the next drop cap, and that feels important.
Anna Altman, Ep. 372

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By Brendan O’Meara

Anna Altman (@bananaaltman) is a freelance journalist and a social worker in training, and she just wrote and reported her second feature for The Atavist Magazine called “The Quality of Mercy.” It deals with compassionate release for the terminally ill and the one man at the center of it advocating for his fellow inmates.

In this episode we dig into how she arrived at this story and the unique challenges of reporting this piece in the ten-minute chunks Anna had with her central figure, Gary Settle, as they spoke through the prison phone system.

Episode 371: Jen A. Miller

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If you can turn in clean copy on time, you will be 95% ahead of everybody else.
Jen A. Miller, Ep. 371

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By Brendan O’Meara

Jen A. Miller (@byJenAMiller) is back with another ebook, Freelance Writing for Laid-Off Journalists (and Those Who Want to Quit).

If Jen is good at anything, it’s breaking down how possible it is to make a nice living as a freelance writer. I mean, I SUCK at it, but that’s not Jen’s fault.

Discovery and Writing Before You’re Ready

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By by by Brendan O’Meara

Hey CNFers, I didn’t have an interview in the can for this week, so I figured I’d try something a little new. Kinda new. Sorta.

This podcast is something of a craft essay. It’s similar to my parting shot … if I only published the parting shot. (Sidebar: This has me thinking, maybe I should bottle up my parting shots and run them on, say, Wednesday, as a mid-week pick me up. If they’re craft based, not if it’s personal. You can email me if you think you’d like that, similar to my flounder (defunct?) Casualty of Words, a writing podcast for people in a hurry. How did it not catch on?)

Episode 370: Christopher McDougall

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Tell the story from the beginning. Don’t tell it from the end. Tell it from where you were when you didn’t know anything. And that stuck with me.
Christopher McDougall, Ep. 370

By Brendan O’Meara

Love that Christopher McDougall (@ChrisMcDougall) came back to the pod. You might remember from Ep. 172. Is that right? 198 episodes ago? Can’t believe that.

Episode 369: Akeem S. Roberts

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The best way to get your style as an artist is when you’re on a deadline that’s very short and you don’t have time to overthink and get all of your influence in it. You just fully present yourself.”
Akeem S. Roberts, Ep. 369

By Brendan O’Meara

Akeem S. Roberts (@akeemteam) is a brilliant cartoonist and wouldn’t you know that he and I are now cosmically connected:

Oh, by the way did I tell you I won The New Yorker caption contest?

Episode 368: Tyler Hooper

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My first rough draft is my outline. That’s what I’m learning about myself. My first drafts are very rough. It’s literally a dump from my head of what I want to say how I want to say it, how I think it should be structured.
Tyler Hooper, Ep. 368

By Brendan O’Meara

Hi there, CNFers, we’ve got Tyler Hooper (@thoope r8) in the house to talk about his piece “The Titanic of the Pacific” for The Atavist Magazine.

Tyler cites the great Erik Larson as an influence and you can feel the pulse of that throughout this nautical-disaster piece about the sinking and tragedy surrounding The Valencia. Tyler writes a bit of the backstory at his Medium page here.

Tyler is a writer, podcaster, and storyteller living on Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Canada. He has a master’s degree in history and has worked as a journalist.

In this episode we talk about :