Brendan O’Meara – Page 20 – Home of The Creative Nonfiction Podcast

Episode 288: And the Category Is … Ricky Tucker!

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

Ricky Tucker (@Rick_Tuck_Lit) is a writer, teacher, and voguer. That last one is significant because he’s the author of And the Category Is … : Inside New York’s Vogue, House, and Ballroom Community (Beacon Press).

In it, Ricky takes us into the subculture of ballroom and refuge and freedom it provided the LGBTQ+ community. In this conversation we talk about the fine line between appreciation and appropriation, house mothers and fathers, finding family, writing as service, and how Ricky found his way to being a writer.

Episode 287: Boomerang with Achy Obejas

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

By Brendan O’Meara

Achy Obejas is a Cuban American writer, translator, and activist whose work focuses on personal and national identity.

She’s here to talk about her book of poetry Boomerang/Bumeran (Beacon Press), which is English and Spanish.

Achy also is the author of the novel Days of Awe and the story collection The Tower of the Antilles.

In this conversation, we talk about:

Episode 286: Jen Winston on Essay Collection as Memoir

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

By Brendan O’Meara

This was a treat, getting to speak with Jen Winston, the debut author behind Greedy: Notes from a Bisexual Who Wants Too Much (Atria).

In this episode we talk about:

Episode 285: Tony Perrottet and ‘The Butcher of Havana’

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By Brendan O’Meara

Tony Perrottet is a journalist, historian, and author of six books.

His latest piece is “The Butcher of Havana,” this for The Atavist Magazine.

We talk about the central figure, Herman Marks, an American who became the chief executioner for the Cuban revolutionaries. It’s an incredibly gripping read.

Episode 280: Laura Todd Carns and ‘Searching for Mr. X,’ an Atavist Original

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By Brendan O’Meara

Laura Todd Carns is here to talk about her latest feature for The Atavist Magazine. It’s called “Searching for Mr. X: For eight years, a man without a memory lived among strangers at a hospital in Mississippi. But was recovering his identity the happy ending he was looking for?”

Laura is a novelist, essayist, and journalist whose work has appeared in many places. You can find out more at her website.

She’s @LauraToddCarns on Twitter.

In this episode we talk about approaching a story as fiction vs. nonfiction, the challenge of the structure of the piece, collaborating with an editor and how it’s like a record producer and a musician, and more.

First I talk to Seyward Darby, as she was the lead editor of the piece. Enjoy!

Episode 279: Athena Dixon on Opening Doors, Day Jobs, and the Personal Essay

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Sponsor love: West Virginia m Wesleyan College’s MFA in Creative Writing and The Facing Project’s Empathy Prize for Nonfiction

By Brendan O’Meara

What a treat!

It’s Athena Dixon (@AthenaDDixon), the author of the essay collection The Incredible Shrinking Woman (Split Lip Press).

Had a great chat about day jobs and threading the work you want to do around that, how there’s no “writer’s life,” but rather just a “writer living.” That’s a direct quote from her Hippocamp talk this year.

Her essay collection delves into her identity as a Black woman, divorce, relationships, sex, the masks we where, and so on. Highly recommend.

Episode 276: Earl Swift Takes Us to the Moon

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By Brendan O’Meara

Earl Swift returns!

He’s back as we take a deep dive into Across the Airless Wilds: The Lunar Rover and the Triumph of the Final Moon Landings, an epic book that details the creative genius and the people behind the “moon car” and the three greatest feats of human exploration, largely forgotten.

Earl is an incredible reporter and writer, spinning intrepid yarns that are densely packed but not weighed down. Incredible stuff.

In this episode we dig into:

Writing and reporting the book during the pandemic
Breaking up longer chapters into shorter chapters
What surprised him about his moon research
And his incredible collaborative relationship with his book editor
And much much more.

Episode 270: How did Daniel Kolitz Pull Off His Atavist Story?

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By Brendan O’Meara

Daniel Kolitz wrote about Enthusiastic Sobriety for The Atavist Magazine, so we talk about how he went about reporting and writing the piece.

I also speak with lead editor Jonah Ogles about what made this story so special.

Episode 269: The Visionary Life of Cecilia Brown, Making Pictures, and This American Life

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By Brendan O’Meara

Cecilia Brown (@cecilbrownn) is on the show to talk about “So Nice to Hear Your Voice,” her This American Life essay about her grandmother. We get into the behind-the-scenes of the piece. Great stuff.

What else do we get into?

Episode 268: Overcoming Bad Viewing Hygiene with The Ringer’s Alison Herman

Sponsors: West Virginia Wesleyan College’s MFA in Creative Writing and HippoCamp 2021.

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By Brendan O’Meara

Alison Herman (@aherman2006) is a staff writer for The Ringer, who writes about all kinds of TV and movies and the like.

What prompted this conversation was her piece about David Gelb, the filmmaker behind Jiro Dreams of Sushi and Chef’s Table.

In this episode we talk about:

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