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Episode 309: Kelly Loudenberg

The Atavist has dropped yet another blockbuster, “The Caregivers,” this by the filmmaker and journalist Kelly Loudenberg.

It’s a great piece that is tender and well-handled by Kelly.

We start this episode by speaking with Seyward Darby, editor-in-chief at the Atavist, about restraint and how writers have more in common with drummers than lead singers.

When Kelly takes the stage, we talk about how doc film influenced her journalism, how giving birth to a premature baby gave her an extra level of connection with the caretakers at the heart of this story, and how she goes about building scenes.

Consider subscribing to the Atavist so you get full access to the incredible work they’re doing month to month, year to year.

The show’s Instagram handle, @creativenonfictionpodcast, and you can always keep the conversation going on Twitter @CNFPod.

And you know I’d rather you sign up for my Up-to-11 Newsletter. Here’s the latest. Signup form is below you and to your right. Book recs, book raffles, cool stuff curated by me for you, CNFin’ happy hour or writing group, writing prompts, fun and entertaining. First of the month. No spam. Can’t beat it.

Consider supporting the show via Patreon patreon.com/cnfpod. Shop around if you want to support the community. I just paid out the writers from the last audio magazine. You make that possible. The show is free but it ain’t cheap.

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Subscribe and download and share across your socials. And don’t forget to consider leaving a kind review on Apple Podcasts. Those go a LONG way.

Episode 308: The Year the Mountain of Manure Was Hit by a Flood

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By Brendan O’Meara

Hey CNFers, welcome to CNF Pod, the creative nonfiction podcast, the show where I usually speak to badass people about the art and craft of telling true stories. I say usually because this week I don’t have a guest.

Booooo…

Hey, hey, hey before you start hurling tomatoes up that the stage, hear me out. My guest this week wasn’t feeling good so we had to reschedule. You might be like, “BO, thought you had some of these in the can. Get your house in order.” And yes, in an ideal world I have a few in the can, but you’d be surprised how many of these interviews are done the week of and packaged soon thereafter.

I could’ve scrambled for a guest but I wanted to try something new. I don’t think this’ll be a regular thing in the podcast feed. I DO think it’ll be a normal thing for the Patreon crew so consider heading to patreon.com/cnfpod to support the podcast to get special podcasts like this one you’re about to hear.

So what’s the deal? In an effort to up the production value and to make the show seem a little bit more zippy, I’ve always been inspired by the structure of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. Here are these episodes that focus on one guest, they film all day, so hours and hours of footage, for what, 15 minutes of final product? What must that edit be like?

Episode 307: Greg Brennecka

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By Brendan O’Meara

Ever been starved for knowledge about meteorites? You came to the right place!

Greg Brennecka is a cosmochemist studying meteoritics and the author of Impact: How Space Rocks Led to Life, Culture, and Donkey Kong. It’s published by William Morrow.

Greg is wicked smaht and works as a staff scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. He received the prestigious Sofia Kovalevskaja Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in 2014 to study the early Solar System at the Institute for Planetology in Munster, Germany, where he led the Solar System Forensics group for five years. His research has appeared in Science, Nature, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

We talk about how the moon formed, how meteorites shaped our culture, and how he goes about snagging a space rock for his research.

The show’s Instagram handle, @creativenonfictionpodcast, and you can always keep the conversation going on Twitter @CNFPod.

Free ways to support the show?

Subscribe and download and share across your socials. And don’t forget to consider leaving a kind review on Apple Podcasts. Those go a LONG way.

Episode 306: Dan Schwartz

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By Brendan O’Meara

Dan Schwartz (@CODanSchwartz) is an investigative journalist.

Good night, everybody! Get home safe!

…

OK, but, for real, Dan is a freelance journo whose most recent piece came out in the Atlantic. It deals with climate change and how local meteorologists are the best vectors for convincing the skeptics about the climate cancer. Read it here.

Fun fact: I wrote about a local weatherman. Not as adeptly as Dan handles his piece for the Atlantic, but, hey, I’m a man in the arena, bruh.

Episode 305: Matt Bell

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By Brendan O’Meara

Matt Bell (@mdbell79) is here. Why? He’s got a great craft book out called Refuse to be Done: How to Write and Rewrite a Novel in Three Drafts.

What a great handbook to walk you through the generative pages and then the arduous task — the REAL work — of refining, rewriting, and revising.

This book will teach you patience.

This book will teach you perserverance.

This book will teach you the meaning of work.

Episode 304: Bill Donahue

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By Brendan O’Meara

It’s that Atavistian time of the of month and I get to welcome the journalist Bill Donahue to the podcast to talk about his new piece “The Voyagers.”

Naturally, it’s an incredible piece that is a voyage across the Bering Strait, but, as Bill notes, a voyage across the Cold War.

I also speak with Jonah Ogles, the lead editor of this piece, about what makes for great profile writing and how an editor can help a writer get to “that good place.”

Lot’s of great rawhide to gnaw on in this podcast.

Episode 303: Damon Brown

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By Brendan O’Meara

“From the rooter to the tooter,” writes Damon Brown in his new book Career Remix: Get the Gig You Want with the Skills You’ve Got (Sterling).

He writes that his southern African American relatives would often get the scraps of the pig, and they’d have to get creative and use everything. I’ll let you connect the dots. What Damon means is, “There is nothing wasted.”

And so we’ve come to his new book about parlaying the skills you’ve got into any gig you want.

This is Damon’s third trip back to the podcast and he always brings it. He’s the author of more than twenty books including Bring Your Worth and The Bite-Sized Entrepreneur.

He’s got a great YouTube show at youtube.com/browndamon. You can find him on Twitter @browndamon and LinkedIn.

Episode 302: Neda Toloui-Semnani

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By Brendan O’Meara

If you’re like me, you like a memoir where the author is hunting for something. Neda Toloui-Semnani is on a quest of sorts in They Said They Wanted Revolution: A Memoir of My Parents (Little a, 2022).

Neda’s father was an Iranian revolutionary who was executed in the early 1980s by the shah’s regime. Neda was a toddler at the time. Neda’s mother and father were part of the protests in Berkley, California and mobilized for change.

While in Iran in the early 80s, Neda recounts the harrowing story of how she and her family escaped Iran after her father was arrested. This book is nuanced and layered and a wonderful read.

Episode 301: Debbie Millman

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Sponsor love: West Virginia Wesleyan College’s MFA in Creative Writing

By Brendan O’Meara

Can you believe it? Debbie Millman has returned the CNF Pod main stage with a new ~~album~~ book called Why Design Matters: Conversations with the World’s Most Creative People (Porchlight Books, 2022).

Debbie might be most known for her incredible work in branding, where at one point or another in her illustrious career she had “touched” roughly 25% of most things on the grocery store shelves. She worked on Burger King’s logo, Tropicana, Twizzlers, and more.

But I know Debbie because of her amazing podcast Design Matters. It started in 2005 and has developed over the years to be one of the greatest interview shows in the podcast-o-sphere. As you know, there are quite a bit.

There are two faces on Mt. Podmore and it’s Debbie Millman and Joe Donahue. That’s it.

Episode 300: Gloria Liu

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Sponsor love: West Virginia Wesleyan College’s MFA in Creative Writing

By Brendan O’Meara

Gloria Liu (@thats_my_line) is a freelance writer/journalist based out of Colorado.

She’s a former features editor for Outside Magazine, and it was a reported essay she wrote for outside about burnout and the meaning of life that prompted this conversation. Can’t find a link to that story, but her piece on garages is awesome, as is this piece on money, as well as the housing crisis in a ski town.

We chat about her journey in freelancing. She’s on her second rodeo with freelancing, after a stint as features editor for Outside. Her background is in finance and business, so we dig into some lessons she learned from that that help her in freelancing.

Brendan’s Monthly Newsletter: First of the month! No spam! Can’t beat it!

Brendan’s Monthly Newsletter: First of the month! No spam! Can’t beat it!