By Brendan O’Meara
Tweetables by Laura Hillenbrand (Laura Hillenbrand on Facebook):
“I like to write books that sound like someone telling the story over a campfire.”
“You learn something when you listen to books that way. You start to hear that music of the language.”
“When I experience something interesting, I need to compose it in words.”
Hey, how’s it goin’, friend? I’m Brendan O’Meara and this is my podcast, The Creative Nonfiction Podcast, the show where I speak to badass writers, filmmakers, and producers about the art and craft of telling true stories. This is the last episode of 2018. We’ve averaged one episode a week for an entire year with no break and we’re finishing the year strong.
In many ways this is the logical conclusion of The Creative Nonfiction Podcast. This is the Tony Soprano cut-to-black moment, Walter White dying beside his precious meth lab, or Gollum plummeting into the fires of Mt. Doom with the Ring of Power clutched in his hand.
This interview with the one and only Laura Hillenbrand was about two years in the making and through unshakable endurance on both sides we were able to get this done, and I don’t think you’ll be disappointed by this in the least.
For those who don’t know, Laura is the best-selling author of Seabiscuit: An American Legend and Unbroken: A WWII Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption (over 28,000 Amazon reviews!). I think best-selling is an understatement. Unbroken spent a staggering 42 weeks at No. 1 on the New York Times Best seller list. Both books were made into Oscar-nominated movies with Gary Ross directing Seabiscuit and Angelina Jolie directing Unbroken. Laura won the National Magazine Award in 2004 for her New Yorker article “A Sudden Illness,” which describes the acute onset of chronic fatigue syndrome, or CFS, that has been with her since the 1980s.
I read Seabiscuit way back in 2003 as I was then a budding horse racing fan and writer of the sport. Naturally it was a titanic influence on how I approached the writing of Six Weeks in Saratoga (22 Amazon reviews!). I read Unbroken in two days. I couldn’t put it down. And the true irony of that book is that if it were anything but a nonfiction book you’d say it was too unbelievable. Written as fiction, nobody would buy it, but when you realize this actually happened, and you peel through the endnotes, and then you realize that Laura wrote the book under the worst of circumstances, it makes it all the more epic in scope.
If you haven’t subscribed to the show, be sure to do that wherever you get your podcasts. If you dig the show, please consider leaving an honest review over on iTunes. If you do, I just might read on the show.
Okay, this is it folks, I hope you’re as fired up as I am. Here’s the unbreakable Laura Hillenbrand.
It doesn’t get better than that does it? It doesn’t, so don’t even try. I’m speechless. I am without speech.
Thanks to Laura for coming on the show. You can follow her on Facebook and go buy her books. They are re-readable and they are master lessons in research, writing, and pacing.
You can follow me and the show on Twitter @BrendanOMeara and @CNFPod. Like the Facebook page, it’s just The Creative Nonfiction Podcast, and feel free to follow me on Instagram where I post cool audiograms of the shows as well as stupid drawings I do when I need to decompress. Always compressin’ over here.
I’d love it if you subscribed to my monthly newsletter where I share my reading recommendations for the month, articles, and what you might have missed from the world of the podcast. It’s a little bite of goodness to start your month. Once a month. No spam. Can’t beat it.
Thanks again to our sponsors in Goucher College’s MFA in Nonfiction and Creative Nonfiction Magazine. And, hey, happy New Year, friend. And thanks for being on this CNFin’ journey with me. Here’s to 2019.
