journalism – Home of The Creative Nonfiction Podcast

Episode 427: Kelsey Rexroat on Dealing with the Monstrosity

By Brendan O’Meara

Kesley Rexroat brings you a beautiful love story for The Atavist Magazine, this one titled “Love, Interrupted.” The dek reads, “Two women promised they would see the Golden Gate Bridge for the first time once they were together. They had no idea how long that would take.”

It’s a wonderful, redemptive story that proves the power of commitment and following one’s true path.

Kelsey is a “meticulous copy editor and dynamic content writer based in San Francisco, California. She specializes in technology, health, and lifestyle.”

Episode 426: Asking for Blurbs, Unauthorized Biographies, and the Mystery of Aaron Rodgers with Ian O’Connor

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By Brendan O’Meara

Ian O’Connor is a modern-day master of the sports biography, the unauthorized sports biography. Unauthorized is not a dirty word, though the industry needs to rebrand around it. We’ll workshop that …

Unauthorized = true journalism, no editorial input from the central figure, more likely closer to the truth instead of the central figure’s truth. It is not a collaboration.

This is the biography you want to read.

And in the hands of someone like Ian, there’s no better reader experience. Ian handled his latest mammoth figure in Out of the Darkness: The Mystery of Aaron Rodgers (Mariner Books) with utmost fairness and showed the grayness of Rodgers’s character, which makes for a gripping and complicated read.

Episode 421: Cole Heilborn says, “We’re Gonna Find What We Find”

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By Brendan O’Meara

Hey! We’ve got Cole Heilborn, a documentary filmmaker and founder of Port Side Productions, a company focusing on outdoor storytelling. His latest film is Inches to Miles, a film made in collaboration with Athletic Brewing. I’m an ambassador! Use BRENDANO20 at checkout for a slick discount, friend! (I don’t get any dough, just points toward beer.)

Episode 406: When to Share a WIP with Darrell Hartman

By Brendan O’Meara

Darrell Hartman (@dwhartman on IG) is a writer and the author of The Battle of Ink and Ice: A Sensational Story of News Barons, North Pole Explorers, and the Making of Modern Media (Viking).

This was Darrell’s first real ambitious project, having written nothing much longer than 3,000 words before. It’s a wonderful book that takes place in the early 20th century but feels incredibly of the moment. People worried about newspaper influence back then the way we worry about social media influence today.

Darrell also talks about when he’s ready to share a work in progress and simplifying the structure when it became evident that the structure was dictating the terms, not the story itself. Really rich stuff.

Episode 393: Katya Cengel and Finding Enough ‘There’ There for The Atavist

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By Brendan O’Meara

Katya Cengel (@kcengel) is a journalist and author, and she’s the journalist behind “The Truth is Out There” for The Atavist Magazine. A father’s disappearance, dark family secrets, and the hunt for Bigfoot.

It’s a touching story on “searching for elusive truths,” that weaves together cryptozoology and a family in search of their father.

So in this episode we unpack who Katya dug up this story, earning trust, and getting comfortable with untidy endings.

We also speak with editor Jonah Ogles about getting pitches over the hump and the value in pitching again and again.

Lots of great stuff for you to chew on.

Episode 391: For the Atavist Magazine, Lily Hyde Takes Us to Ukraine

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By Brendan O’Meara

For this month’s Atavist, Lily Hyde wrote “Two Thousand Miles from Home,” as Russia invaded Ukraine, theree women from the same family became pregnant at the same time. Then the war tore them apart.

Pretty bonkers, right?

Just wait till you read it.

Lily riffs on how she arrived at this story, how she came to live in Ukraine, the novel that’s helping her narrative nonfiction, and how she earns trust.

We start off by speaking with lead editor Jonah Ogles so, you know, you’re gonna get some inside baseball from the other side of the table.

Episode 385: Robert Kolker

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Want some suds? Visit athleticbrewing.com and use promo code BRENDANO20 at checkout. I don’t get money, just points toward swag and beer.

By Brendan O’Meara

Let me list the accolades and accomplishments of Robert Kolker:

Best-selling author of Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family and Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Mystery.
Lost Girls is now a Netflix film
Hidden Valley Road was recommended not only by Oprah, but also Barrack Obama
His features have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, New York Magazine, Wired, and Oprah Magazine, among others.

His latest is “Dead Reckoning” for The Atavist Magazine, and it chronicles the greatest peacetime nautical disaster in U.S. history. It deals with skepticism over technology, honor, fathers and sons, hubris, and many other juicy themes.

Episode 382: Lucy Sexton and Joe Sexton

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By Brendan O’Meara

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.

Episode 381: Michael Finkel

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I think of my office as my big batter’s eye. In my peripheral vision, when I’m sitting at my desk, from left to right and all the way in front of me, I like blank walls. And then I’ll put all of my research behind me. It’s kind of a crazy thing. I have stacks and stacks of research that I can’t see unless I turn around and grab it. That fools me into the fact that I there’s like tabula rasa, there’s a blank slate in front of me and all my research is behind me. And that’s when I can really do my writing.
Michael Finkel, Ep. 381

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By Brendan O’Meara

Michael Finkel (@MikeFinkel) is here to talk about his new book The Art Thief: A True Story of Passion, Obsession, and a Monumental Crime Spree (Knopf). You could say this is a story of passion and obsession. It’s quite good.

Michael is an accomplished journalist and best selling author of The Stranger in the Woods and True Story.

His work has appeared in Sports Illustrated, The New York Times Magazine, and National Geographic.

Episode 371: Jen A. Miller

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If you can turn in clean copy on time, you will be 95% ahead of everybody else.
Jen A. Miller, Ep. 371

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By Brendan O’Meara

Jen A. Miller (@byJenAMiller) is back with another ebook, Freelance Writing for Laid-Off Journalists (and Those Who Want to Quit).

If Jen is good at anything, it’s breaking down how possible it is to make a nice living as a freelance writer. I mean, I SUCK at it, but that’s not Jen’s fault.