Episode 446: Harrison Scott Key and the Plight of Memoir

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By Brendan O’Meara

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Harrison Scott Key (@harrisonscottkey) has written three memoirs, and what’s key to them as the narrator is making yourself either the idiot or the villain. In How to Stay Married: The Most Insane Love Story Ever Told (Avid Reader Press) he was, for a time, the victim of his wife’s affair. But in deftly maneuvering and playing with structure he treats his marriage like a crime novel.

Harrison saves some of the biggest punches for himself as and his wife pieced together the wreckage into something lasting.

Harrison is also the author of The World’s Largest Man and Congratulations, Who Are You Again? He’s masterfully funny and handles the balance between jokes and earnestness with a skill few possess.

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Hashtag #CNF Episode 4: Harrison Scott Key

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By Brendan O’Meara

I get to interview some pretty cool people doing this humble little podcast. In this latest episode, I speak with Harrison Scott Key about his award-winning essay The Wishbone. The Wishbone won Creative Nonfiction’s Southern Sin essay contest. It is a wildly funny essay about his father bending the rules to win a football game … a pee-wee football game … in which he recruit’s his 14-year-old son—Harrison—to suit up as the team’s integral 11th player.

In this interview we talk about comedy writing and where Key developed his comedic sensibility. Enjoy and share!

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