Episode 299: Christine Grimaldi and “The Shadow and the Ghost”

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By Brendan O’Meara

Christine Grimaldi (@chgrimaldi) is here to talk about her piece for The Atavist Magazine called “The Shadow and the Ghost.

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.

Continue reading “Episode 299: Christine Grimaldi and “The Shadow and the Ghost””

Episode 294: ‘We Wish to be Able to Sing’, Mike Damiano Talks About His Atavist Story

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

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By Brendan O’Meara

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.

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Episode 289: The Atavist’s ‘Feast for Lost Souls’ with Annelise Jolley and Zahara Gomez

Zahara Gomez
Annelise Jolley
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By Brendan O’Meara

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.

Continue reading “Episode 289: The Atavist’s ‘Feast for Lost Souls’ with Annelise Jolley and Zahara Gomez”