It’s that Atavistian time of the month and we’ve got a two-for-one, BOGO!, with Lucy Sexton, a documentary filmmaker, and Joe Sexton, a lifelong newspaperman and father to Lucy.
Lucy was working on a doc about the Iran hostage crisis when her father was taken hostage while reporting in Libya. What came out of it was “Held Together,” edited by Seyward Darby.
What’s all the more compelling is the dual authorship, not in the traditional co-bylined affairs that are uniform in nature with two names atop the story. This is two distinctly tuned instruments playing together in harmony.
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.
There are many kinds of love stories. This one involves a woman and an elephant, and their bond spanning nearly 50 years. It involves devotion and betrayal. It also raises difficult questions about the relationship between humans and animals, about control and freedom, about what it means to own another living thing.
Shannon wrote this piece on spec as it was part of her MFA project from the University of Georgia. This is something of a rarity for Seyward Darby, editor-in-chief of the Atavist, and we talk a little bit about that at the top of the show.
It’s that Atavistian time of the month! And this time we have J.B. MacKinnon, author of the feature “True Grit.”
This piece chronicles the harrowing journey a few feral cows made during a hurricane in North Carolina’s Outer Banks. Let’s just say cows can swim … a LONG time if needed.
J.B. is the author or coauthor of five books of nonfiction. An award-winning journalist, his work has appeared in such publications as the New Yorker, National Geographic, and the Atlantic, as well as the Best American Science and Nature Writing anthologies. He is an adjunct professor of journalism at the University of British Columbia, where he teaches feature writing.
Katia Savchuk speaks fluent Russian. She went to Harvard. She went to the Columbia School of Journalism. She’s written for The New Yorker, The Washington Post, Forbes and … The Atavist!
And that’s what brings Katia (@katiasav) to the podcast this week as we talk about her piece “A Crime Beyond Belief.” It’s an incredible feat of reporting, writing, structure, tension, all the things.
My 94 yo grandmother, a Holocaust survivor, is trapped in her Kyiv apartment with my father. She can’t really walk, and he can’t drive due to a disability. If anyone knows of any resources that can help with evacuation, please let me know.
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It blends memoir and journalism into a gripping tale of grifters and when secrets become an inheritance.
We talk about about her story, her love being edited, and being a “sentence thief.”
We also hear from lead editor and editor-in-chief Seyward Darby about the experience of editing this piece, as well as other themes that cropped regarding Christine’s piece.
Mike Damiano brings 2021 to a close with his piece for the Atavist Magazine about an unlikely revolutionary who helped the people of Easter Island earn rights they deserved from an oppressive Chilean naval regime. It’s the story of Alfonso Rapu a school teacher turned revolutionary via nonviolence. It’s called “We Wish to Be Able to Sing.”
Mike is a staff writer for Boston Magazine, but like many people writing stories for the Atavist, he’d been working on this Easter Island story for years. Atavist becomes like this benevolent foster home for stories that are too long for traditional magazines and too short to be books. And Seyward and Jonah say, come here little story, we’re gonna make you a STAR!
The show has a new 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. 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.
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.
Annelise Jolley and Zahara Gomez teamed up to create “A Feast for Lost Souls” for this month’s piece for The Atavist Magazine.
What an incredible story about a group of women who hunt for the bodies of their “disappeared” loved ones, but find ways to honor them through cooking. The Memory Recipe Book is what Zahara helped develop, along with the widows and mothers, to pay tribute to their lost sons and husbands.
Zahara also created a few mini-documentaries as part of this story to go along with Annelise’s incredible reporting and writing of the piece.
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