memoir – Home of The Creative Nonfiction Podcast

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS for Issue 4 of the Audio Magazine: CODES

photo “courtesy” of CNN.com

This is the way.

The Mandalorian and his kind live by a simple code, always punctuated by saying “This is the way.”

What codes do you live by? What codes were you at one time or another TOLD to live by? Do you admire codes and singular devotion, or do you feel unfairly shackled to a way of life? Has a code led you to the right path or down the wrong? Capt. Fantastic (“Power to the people. Stick it to the man.”) lived by a code, but it put his several children at odds with the world and nearly paralyzed one child.

Essays should be no longer than 2,000 words (a 15-minute read, bear in mind that, in the end, these are audio essays. Write accordingly.). Email submissions with CODE in the subject line to creativenonfictionpodcast at gmail dot com. Original, previously unpublished work only, please. Oh, and I pay $25 per accepted essay. It’s not much, but you can buy a couple burritos with it.

There is cash on the line, so send me your best, fully formed pieces and consider becoming a patron to help put money in the coffers that helps put money in the pockets of writers.

DEADLINE: Oct. 31, 2025

Simultaneous submissions are fine, but if your piece is accepted elsewhere or you’re holding out for a more “prestigious” publication, please let me know ASAP as I read these essays very closely and even give rejected essays detailed notes for improvement.

This is the way.

Episode 478: Nick Paumgarten says, ‘The Reporting Suggests the Root System’

Become a Patron!

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever!

Personal News and/or Shoutouts for Pals

Hey CNFers, The Front Runner is officially out. I like to think I don’t ask for much, but now is the time buy a copy or three and, if you read it, you know the drill, need ratings and reviews. I won’t read them because I don’t want to be driven insane, but that’s the world we live in: ratings and reviews. Your call to action to support the book, me, and ye ol’ CNF Pod. If you’re still on the fence, and why would you be, there’s an excerpt of the book over at Lit Hub. Dig it.

Next two events are July 17 at Elliott Bay Books in Seattle at 7 p.m. and July 27 at Gratitude Brewing for a live taping of the podcast, 1 p.m.

I also started what’s proving to be a pretty popular venture called Pitch Club. It’s at welcometopitchclub.substack.com and I have a writer audio annotate a pitch. It’s tactical and it’s practical. It’s going to help you get where you want to go.

“I don’t have to state too baldly what that all means. And because I think part of it is that I’m incapable of stating things like that baldly. I’m not smart enough. I lack the language and the real rhetorical muscle to state things baldly. I’d rather not hit it on the nose, because I have bad aim.” — Nick Paumgarten, staff writer for The New Yorker

Episode 474: How to Reconfigure the Fireworks with Yi Shun Lai

Become a Patron!

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever!

Personal News and/or Shoutouts for Pals

“There is this myth that you are a writer only if you are butt in chair, banging away at your keyboard for eight hours and then the rest of the time on a fainting couch somewhere, noodling over your ideas. And that kind of imagery does a lot of damage to young writers today.” — Yi Shun Lai

The Joy of Leaving Amazon Reviews: Getting Two Feet Inbounds

By Brendan O’Meara

Ok but listen: I don’t like Amazon.

I don’t have a Prime account.

I very, very, very rarely order anything from Amazon. But I realize I’m in the vast minority there.

That said, for authors big and small, Amazon ratings and reviews matter. Many book readers (the few who remain) out there buy their books from Amazon. Or, if they don’t, they look for the validation of a highly rated title. I’m assuming on that last bit of insight.

So I’ve been taking great joy in leaving short Amazon reviews for authors who come on this podcast, something I’ve historically not done.

Episode 472: Melissa Febos and the Art of Personal Exploration with ‘The Dry Season’

Become a Patron!

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever!

A mostly accurate transcript for Ep. 472¹

“As soon as I heard people refer to writers as actual people, I thought, ‘oh, my god, is that an option? Because I choose that option.’ And I just latched onto it immediately.” — Melissa Febos, from Ep. 472

Episode 470: Megan Baxter is Into Rewilding Her Writing

Become a Patron!

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever!

A mostly accurate transcript for Ep. 470¹.

“It’s also just confidence and knowing that it’s still there, and knowing that you are a writer when you are not writing.” — Megan Baxter, from Ep. 470

Episode 467: How to Bounce Back from ‘Viscerally Negative’ Feedback with Will Bardenwerper

Friday, May 9, 2025

Become a Patron!

Who’s on the docket for the Friday matinee, looks like it’s Will Bardenwerper, author of The Prisoner in His Palace: Saddam Hussein, His American Guards, and What History Leaves Unsaid and most recently, Homestand: Small Town Baseball and the Fight for the Soul of America (Doubleday).

The story takes us to Batavia, New York in the western part of the state not too far from Buffalo. Batavia used to be home to the minor league Muckdogs but was wiped out during Major League Baseball’s consolidation of dozens of minor league teams, teams that were often the beating hearts of so many communities. What took that team’s place was a wood-bat college baseball summer league similar to the Cape Cod League, but not quite as awash in talent.

Episode 466: Katie Goh on Issues of Identity and the Trappings of Mythology

Friday, May 9, 2025

Become a Patron!

For Ep. 466 we’ve got Katie Goh (@katie_goh on IG), author of Foreign Fruit: A Personal History of the Orange. It’s published by Tin House. This is a book that blends memoir and biography: biography of a fruit, that is.

I didn’t tell Katie this, but John McPhee’s slim book Oranges was one of the seminal books that made me want to write narrative nonfiction, that and McPhee’s Survival of the Bark Canoe. Katie, who is of southeast Asian and northern Irish descent, the book tackles issues of identity, colonialism, capitalism, xenophobia and racism, still life art and mythology. It’s dense, it’s expansive, it’s a really fine book.

Episode 462: On Podcasting and Gardens with Debbie Millman

Friday, April 11, 2025

Become a Patron!

Link to full transcript.¹

“[The early podcasts are] essentially unlistenable, unless you want to get a sense of how bad a person could be in early podcasting.” —Debbie Millman, host of Design Matters and author of Love Letter to a Garden

C’mon, really? Debbie Millman (@debbiemillman on IG) not only appeared here for Ep. 462, but it’s her third trip to CNF Pod HQ (her first and second are here and here). It’s when people return — and by all accounts seem happy to return — that validates the enterprise all the more.

Debbie has a new book out, Love Letter to a Garden (Timber Press), which is a bountiful book with her tight, concise, philosophical voice, much of it in her beautiful hand lettering. The book also has recipes from her wife, Roxane Gay. You may have heard of her.

Episode 460: Pulitzer Prize-Winning Biographer Megan Marshall Takes on Personal Essays in ‘After Lives’

Friday, March 28, 2025

Become a Patron!

“You can’t think of anything more pleasing, I guess, to a biographer, than that they would be able to look in the coffin of their subject, but I did,” says Megan Marshall, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 2014 for Margaret Fuller: A New American Life. Her latest book, After Lives: On Biography and the Mysteries of the Human Heart (Mariner Books) takes a more personal turn.

She’s also the author of Elizabeth Bishop: A Miracle for Breakfast and The Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticism (a Pulitzer finalist).