By Brendan O’Meara
Cassandra King Conroy is the author of several works of fiction and, most recently, the memoir Tell Me a Story: My Life with Pat Conroy.
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“These guys were screaming at me from beyond the grave.” —Bob Batchelor (@CultPopCulture)
“I worked to write the longest screenplay possible.” —Bob Batchelor
By Brendan O’Meara
Here we are again, CNFers! What’s new?
We’ve got Bob Batchelor here talking about The Bourbon King: The Life and Crimes of George Remus, Prohibition’s Evil Genius (Diversion Books)
Crazy story, a story that partly inspired The Great Gatsby, perhaps, maybe.
I hope you check it out.
We dig into lots of great things: How John Updike showed Bob the way, singing a kind of Pennsylvania song, and dealing with a real rotten teacher who made Bob’s life miserable until he got out from under her and made something of himself with mentors who saw his potential in college. It’s a great story.
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Hey, CNFers! Look who’s back! It’s Sonja Livingston, whose latest book The Virgin of Prince Street: Expeditions into Devotion (University of Nebraska Press) is the subject of our conversation.
This is a nice, tight thirty-minute interview. If you want a little more background on Sonja, check out Episode 56. It’s that special kind of memoir that has some journalistic components, something you might find in books by Leslie Jamison or Meredith May.
We dig into what brought Sonja to this story and how she rediscovered a long dormant devotion to Catholicism. The book doesn’t read like some icky treatise on becoming born again. It’s not evangelical in the least. It’s a person on a journey, a literal and figurative journey. And in the hands of a writer like Sonja,
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Could that be it? I think so.
View on Zencastr
“You tend to agree more with the people who don’t like what you do more than the people who do like what you do.” — Steven Hyden (@steven_hyden)
Hey, CNFers, glad you could make it. Got Steven Hyden for you. He’s a rock critic for Uproxx and his podcast Break Stuff about Woodstock ’99 is the stuff of legend. So I reached out to him.
We talk about that, books as roadtrips, and how you can have, perhaps, “questionable” taste, but still be a good read.
He makes mention of Chuck Klosterman being an inspiration given they come from similar backgrounds: remote upbringing yet somehow made a go of it in mainstream rock criticism.
Keep the conversation going on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. I hope I’ve made something worth sharing, so share widely. And if you’re feeling kind, leave a review on Apple Podcasts.
Your Favorite Band is Killing Me: What Pop Music Rivalries Reveal About the Meaning of Life
Twilight of the Gods: A Journey to the End of Classic Rock
Hard to Handle: The Life and Death of the Black Crowes—A Memoir
“Every piece of writing is going to be hard in some way, and you just have to know that, and sit with it and keep going forward, and you will have a breakthrough at some point if you don’t give up.” —Kate Hopper
By Brendan O’Meara
Hey, there, CNFers, Kate Hopper (@MNKateHopper) joins me to talk about her True Story essay “Stumbling into Joy.” In case you couldn’t tell from the title of this episode, she learns to play the bass guitar in her forties. It’s pretty rad.
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Thanks to Goucher’s MFA in Nonfiction, Bay Path University’s MFA in Creative Nonfiction, and River Teeth for the support.
By Brendan O’Meara
Welcome back, CNFers! The 301 Redirect is live so you should be getting that bump of CNF now in your feeds. Sorry about that missed week there. Things got broke. Acutally, things are still mildly broken with some older episodes. The podcast gremlins are on it.
Steven Kurutz is here. He’s a features writer for The New York Times, and it was his essay for Creative Nonfiction’s True Story, “Fruitland,” that made me want to reach out.
This was a fun one and I hope you dig it. If you do, please share it with your immediate network. That’s how I want this show to keep growing, not by interrupting people with Facebook ads, but by you deciding it has value and sharing it with your friends. Hand to hand. You’re the social network, man.
If you dig the show, consider leaving a review on Apple Podcasts.
Keep the conversation going on Twitter @CNFPod. Let me know your thoughts. Podcast for your thoughts.
“I like to joke that this [conference] is my investment in literary citizenship.” —Donna Talarico (@donnatalarico)
CNFers! There’s a coupon code IN THIS EPISODE for a massive discount on your last-minute registration for Hippocamp 2019! But you gotta listen.
Oh, hey, this is CNF, the show where I talk to badass people about the art and craft of telling true stories. Welcome.
I ask that if you dig the show, you share it with a few of your friends, link up to it on social, and tag the show @CNFPod on Twitter and @cnfpod on Instagram. We’re on Facebook too. I’ll jump in the fire with you.
If you’re feeling kind, leave a review on Apple Podcasts. We’re still on Mission 100 and we’re 28 away. There’s 28 of you out there, right? I sure hope so.
Big thanks to our patrons this week in Goucher College’s MFA in Nonfiction, Bay Path University’s MFA in Creative Nonfiction and Riverteeth, a journal for creative nonfiction.
Sign up for the newsletter. Once a month, no spam, can’t beat it. Anything else, CNFer? Enjoy the show!
“A great story for me is one that engages me emotionally. It’s like a love affair.” —Fred Waitzkin
“A great story can light up the page.” —Fred Waitzkin
“The joy of it is writing those paragraphs.” —Fred Waitzkin
This week’s episode of CNF, aka The Creative Nonfiction Podcast, features Fred Waitzkin, the author of several books including Searching for Bobby Fischer and his most recent novel Deep Water Blues.
Lots of tasty nuggets in this episode. Maybe what struck me most about it was his sheer love of writing as a craft, as an art. So we talk about that, how his mismatched parents taught him what he knows, how he must take a break after each book, and the how he cracked the code of Deep Water Blues by writing a screenplay, of all things.
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“Let me be your sounding board for how the piece should come together.” — Seyward Darby (@seywarddarby)
“Writing reminds you what it’s like to stare at a blank page and how hard it is to create a first draft,” Seyward Darby said on Episode 162 of the podcast.
She’s the executive editor of The Atavist Magazine, an online jam that produces one longform feature a month. It’s awesome. It’s on my bucket list as a place to have work published.
So many great nuggets in this episode specifically about pitching/querying. It’s another master class in what she finds strong. See episodes with Evan Ratliff and Ian Frisch. You gotta have a good fastball, baby.
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Keep the conversation going on Twitter @CNFPod. Instagram is @cnfpod and Facebook is @CNFPodcast or The Creative Nonfiction Podcast. Go jump in. It’s fun. The water’s refreshing.
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Enjoy the show!
“This is not something that comes overnight. It’s a long, arduous road,” says Mark Kram Jr.
Mark Kram Jr., author of Smokin’ Joe: The Life of Joe Frazier, joined me for a great conversation about his early career and the struggles he overcame.
He learned on the job, more or less. He said he was a late bloomer (Something I can attest to. Still waitin’ on my bloom.)
He also wrote Like Any Normal Day, and edited a book of his father’s best writing Great Men Die Twice.
Mark has won the PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing and has been anthologized The Best American Sports Writing six times.
As always, if you dig the show, please share this across your social networks. Tag the show @CNFPod on Twitter and I’ll jump in the fire with you. You can subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts.