Tag: madeleine blais

Episode 278: Having a ‘Blast’ with Volcanologist Jess Phoenix

Jess Phoenix
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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

Jess Phoenix. What else is there to say? She’s the author of Ms. Adventure: My Wild Explorations in Science, Lava, and Life (Timber Press, 2021). She’s a volcanologist and geologist (that might be like saying a square is also a rectangle, but we’ll leave it at that, mmkay?). She’s the founder of Blueprint Earth. She has studied English, history, geology, and earned an MFA in creative nonfiction. She also ran for Congress in 2018. She co-owns a horse farm where she rescues retired thoroughbreds from potential slaughter and re-trains them to be jumpers.

How’s your life going?

Oh, and she delivered a pretty baller TEDx talk.

You might wonder why someone like her would talk to a scrub like me. And you’d be correct to wonder, but here we are!

Continue reading “Episode 278: Having a ‘Blast’ with Volcanologist Jess Phoenix”

Episode 74—Madeleine Blais says Reality is Compelling Enough

Pulitzer Prize winner Madeleine Blais joined me on the podcast. Maddy is a dear friend and treasured mentor and it was so great to speak to her about her work and her new book “To the New Owners.”

By Brendan O’Meara

Tweetables by Madeleine Blais

“I always say mixed feelings equal material.”

“You’re only as great as your next story.”

“If you’re a feature writer or a person who does longform, you start to suspect a lot of depth in a lot of people.”

“I try to tell myself that nothing is ever wasted.”

“Reality was compelling enough.”

“I like the stories that make me feel like I’m going in the opposite direction of other people.”

Welcome back to another episode of The Creative Nonfiction Podcast, the show where I speak with the world’s best artists about creating works of nonfiction to try and tease out the origins, habits, and routines so that you can apply their skills of mastery to your own work: narrative journalists, New York Times bestselling authors, award-winning filmmakers and, yes, even a Pulitzer Prize winner. Continue reading “Episode 74—Madeleine Blais says Reality is Compelling Enough”