glenn stout – Home of The Creative Nonfiction Podcast

Episode 398: Emily Sohn Explores the Complicated Legacy of Virginia Kraft

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By Brendan O’Meara

Emily Sohn (@tidepoolsink) is a freelance journalist based out of Minnesota. For Long Lead, she wrote “The Catch,” an in-depth feature about Virginia Kraft, a trailblazing and complicated woman who was one of the first female writers at Sports Illustrated.

It’s a gripping piece that delves into the ruthlessly ambitious life of Kraft, while weaving in present-day introspection from Emily.

We talk about how she arrived at the story, how she got her head around the research, and the dark night of the soul that always accompanies long work.

Emily’s work has appeared in Long Lead, National Geographic, the Washington Post, Outside, and the New York Times, among others.

Now in Paperback: Glenn Stout on Combining the Things You Love, Effort, and the Poem That ‘Knocked Him on his Ass’

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By Brendan O’Meara

This was originally published as Episode 14 on Dec. 6, 2015.

Always nice blow the dust off an older podcast. By virtue of the being older, the snap judgement is that they’re dated. I do go back through and re-edit the paperback podcasts to scrub out what feels dated and keep what’s evergreen.

It helps that, by and large, I try and produce evergreen interviews from the start, but this one had some references to a old job of Glenn’s, which didn’t really fit for 2023.

But what’s left is sure to give you a run for your money, man.

Episode 355: Flinder Boyd

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By Brendan O’Meara

Ten years.

Ten years since “20 Minutes at Rucker Park” by Flinder Boyd (@FlinderBoyd) for SB Nation Longform for the incomparable editor Glenn Stout.

It felt like a good time to knock on Flinder’s door and have a conversation about what the past ten years has been like for him and what the next ten might look like.

Episode 338: Remembering Matt Tullis

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By Brendan O’Meara

Matt Tullis, a survivor of childhood cancer, a professor, a writer, an author, a podcaster, passed away following complications from surgery.

If you want to help the Tullis family, here is a link to their gofundme page.

He was the author of Running with Ghosts, a memoir of his experience surviving cancer. It’s a wonderful book.

And it’s a tragic loss not only to his family, but also the nonfiction community. A tumor had surfaced, no doubt a result of the treatment he endured as a teenager.

Episode 251: Glenn Stout Brings to Life The Tiger Girl and the Candy Kid: America’s First Gangster Couple

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By Brendan O’Meara

Glenn Stout returns for his fifth time to the podcast, this time to talk about his thrilling new book The Tiger Girl and the Candy Kid: America’s First Gangster Couple.

The book takes us to the 1920s, a time when wars were supposed to be a thing of the past, a pandemic wiped across the globe, and veterans coming from the Great War had little support at home. I’m glad all those things are a relic of the 20th century.

An Editing Hack

By Brendan O’Meara

With a hat tip to the writer and editor Glenn Stout, a great editing trick is this:

Change the font and the change the size of the font.

I typically compose in Times New Roman, but to change the “eye level,” to borrow a baseball term, I then edit in Comic Sans size 14.

I know, there’s all kinds of hate for Comic Sans, but let me tell you, I almost never miss a mistake.

Convert it back and ship your clean draft. Easy peasy.

Episode 244: Jackie MacMullan on the Fear of Failure, Writing that Teaches You, and the Final Chapter of ‘Best American Sports Writing’

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By Brendan O’Meara

Jackie MacMullan, the legendary basketball writer, is on the podcast to talk about judging what we know to be the final installment of The Best American Sports Writing.

She’s chronicled the NBA (big ups to Louisa Thomas) since the early 1980s for The Boston Globe, Sports Illustrated and now ESPN.

Her five-part series on mental health in the NBA was widely lauded and a must-read.

Episode 232: Change is the Only Constant with Glenn Stout

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By Brendan O’Meara

For the 30th and final edition of what we have come to know as The Best American Sports Writing series (Best American Paper, or Houghton Mifflin. Harcourt, (Amazon says Best American Paper, HMH’s website says it’s theirs. I don’t know anymore.), 2020), CNFPod bestie Glenn Stout returns to the show to talk about BASW and the evolution of journalism, or the evolution of the medium.

He also has a new book coming out in March: Tiger Girl and the Candy Kid: America’s Original Gangster Couple. It is available for pre-order.

If you want your fix of Stout, he’s been on the show here, here, and here. All worth listening to. There’s nobody better at distilling what this mess is all about.

Episode 126—Glenn Stout on Shotgunning Ledes, Creative Chain Smoking, and ‘The Pats’

Glenn Stout is the author of several books, most recently “The Pats,” and the series editor for Best American Sports Writing.

By Brendan O’Meara

“You look for the narrative, which tells a larger story.” —Glenn Stout (@glennstout)

“I never try to write a valentine. I always try to tell the story straight.” —Glenn Stout

Buckle up, CNFers, I’m Brendan O’Meara and this is my podcast, the show where I speak to the best writers and filmmakers, producers and podcasters about the art and craft of telling true stories. I try and extract habits and routines around the work so you can apply those tools of mastery to your own work.

Episode 20—Glenn Stout on his new book “The Selling of the Babe,” Dealing with Dead People, and the Transcendent Nature of Hitting Home Runs

“You have to be out in the world and engaged in the world.” —Glenn Stout

“The truth always tells a better story.”—Glenn Stout

By Brendan O’Meara

First off, I’m like WAY behind in blog posts. I have to draw up one for Mary Pilon and Brian Mockenhaupt, but I’ll start with the latest episode and work backwards.

Enter Glenn Stout. [Hear our first interview…here]

His latest book The Selling of the Babe: The Deal That Changed Baseball and Created a Legend (St. Martin’s Press) comes out this week.

I speak to Glenn about dealing with dead people and how he approached a topic that, on its surface, felt saturated.

“You look at what seem to be time-worn topics and almost without fail you find something and you tell a better story, a newer story, a truer story,” says Glenn.

The first 30-35 minutes of the episode deal with the Babe, but the latter part riffs on random stuff.

Writers and Books Mentioned

Jack Kerouac, On the Road
Antonin Artaud, No More Masterpieces
Rainer Maria Rilke
James Wright
The Poetics of the New American Poetry
Langston Hughes
Michale Graff
Jeremy Collins
Eva Holland

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Writers and Books Mentioned

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