Author Interview – Page 2 – Home of The Creative Nonfiction Podcast

Episode 455: Will McGrath’s Season on the Sidelines for The Believer

Friday, March 7, 2025

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Will McGrath says, “I’ve heard people describe anthropology as deep hanging out. It’s the the minutia of everyday life. It’s the quotidian stuff that is actually really interesting.”

Will wrote a brilliant reported essay for The Believer Magazine as he followed a cast of young men and their basketball season titled “American Boys.” If you loved Darcy Frey‘s book The Last Shot, you’ll love Will’s piece.

Episode 454: Allegra Rosenberg’s Tale of Love on Ice for The Atavist

Friday, Feb. 28, 2025

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Two pods in one day? It happened! Allegra Rosenberg (@tchotchke.bsky.social) is here to talk about her Atavist story “From Antarctica with Love“: Captain Robert Falcon Scott’s doomed journey to the South Pole captivated the world. But hidden with the legend was a story that has never been told—a love affair between two of the crew who survived.

Allegra’s work has appeared in WIRED, National Geographic, Slate, and The Atlantic. She writes about tech, fandom, media, AI, history, science, music and, of course, polar exploration.

Episode 453: Chandlor Henderson, Live at Gratitude Brewing, Says ‘Focus on the Skill’

Friday, Feb. 28, 2025

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There isn’t much Chandlor Henderson (nywele_hendo) doesn’t do. He’s an editor, a writer, a journalist, a filmmaker, a comic book writer, a student at the University of Oregon, a Google Scholar, so it was a great pleasure to speak with him in the first in a series of quarterly live podcasts, this one recorded at Gratitude Brewing in Eugene.

(Allow me the space to thank Jesse Springer for letting me borrow his speakers for this event).

This was a great conversation and what Ruby McConnell and I hope will be a regular thing in Eugene, to turn the city into the same kind of draw that Portland is for many authors coming through the PNW.

Episode 452: lamb of god’s Randy Blythe’s Search for Perspective in ‘Just Beyond the Light’

Friday, Feb. 21, 2025

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If Randy Blythe’s first book, Dark Days, was about accountability, his second book, Just Beyond the Light: Making Peace with the Wars Inside Our Head (Grand Central), is about perspective.

In essays ranging from the premature death of a young fan to surfing waves to revering his beloved grandmother, Randy talks about art and music and the messiness of being a creative person.

Episode 451: When Beach Read Meets a System with Lindsay Jill Roth

Friday, Feb. 14, 2025

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When Lindsay Jill Roth (@lindsayjillroth) described her latest book as beach read meets system, that was pretty spot-on. There’s a breezy, conversational tone to Romances & Practicalities: A Love Story (Maybe Yours?) in 250 Questions (William Morrow). It weaves the research and interviews Lindsay did along with her personal story of finding her partner.

Lindsay is an award-winning television producer and writer, with novel under her belt as well, What Pretty Girls Are Made Of (Simon & Schuster). She has worked events like The Grammys, The TONYs, and The Masters.

Episode 450: Ahead of Super Bowl LIX, John Eisenberg Chronicles the Long Journey of the Black Quarterback

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John Eisenberg knew he wanted to write books from a very young age. He has written eleven … his latest being Rocket Men: The Black Quarterbacks Who Revolutionized Pro Football (Basic Books).

It’s an amazing history that tackles (pardon the football pun) the institutionalized/structural racism of the NFL from the perspective of the quarterback position.¹

There was a time when Black men were thought mentally incapable of handling the position, but they were encouraged to change positions to less intellectually demanding positions. Yeah.

Episode 449: Drew Philp Wants to Make Spanakopita Out of Spinach News

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It’s that Atavistian time of the month and this month’s story is heavy and chronicles what is likely, probably, a genocide in Tigray, Ethiopia … the hospital was overrun with victims. The medical staff risked everything to treat the wounded and believe the world ignored a genocide.

Drew Philp (@drewphilp.bsky.social) is the journalist behind “There Will Be No Mercy,” and we talk about how he pitched this as ER only in an Ethiopian hospital as that population endured unthinkable indignities. And this isn’t a historical piece. This happened within the last five years. Yeah. It’s a courageous piece of reporting, but even more courageous of the people at the heart of the story who literally are risking their lives to have this story told.

Episode 448: Evan Ratliff Returns … Or Did He?

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[Downloadable Transcript TK, CNFers]

Very nice to welcome Evan Ratliff (@ev_rat_public) back to the program, the special occasion being his incredible podcast Shell Game, the show where Evan created an AI voice agent in his own image and set it loose on the world.

It raises many questions about the ethics and the utility of the increasingly sophisticated world of voice agents. It won’t be too far into the future where they will be indistinguishable from actual humans.

Episode 447: Brooke Champagne Sits Back from the Suckitude

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By Brendan O’Meara

Brooke Champagne (@champagne_brooke) knows many things, but maybe most of all is that feeling of being able to sit and labor through shitty writing to get to the good writing. And get to the good writing she did in her brilliant essay collection Nola Face: A Latina’s Life in the Big Easy (University of Georgia Press).

You can’t put this essay collection in a box, unless that box is titled “really cool shit.”

Episode 446: Harrison Scott Key and the Plight of Memoir

By Brendan O’Meara

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Harrison Scott Key (@harrisonscottkey) has written three memoirs, and what’s key to them as the narrator is making yourself either the idiot or the villain. In How to Stay Married: The Most Insane Love Story Ever Told (Avid Reader Press) he was, for a time, the victim of his wife’s affair. But in deftly maneuvering and playing with structure he treats his marriage like a crime novel.

Harrison saves some of the biggest punches for himself as and his wife pieced together the wreckage into something lasting.

Harrison is also the author of The World’s Largest Man and Congratulations, Who Are You Again? He’s masterfully funny and handles the balance between jokes and earnestness with a skill few possess.