Sponsor love: West Virginia Wesleyan College’s MFA in Creative Writing
Look who’s back? It’s Sonya Huber!
What a treat!
She the author of the memoir Supremely Tiny Acts: A Memoir of a Day (Mad Creek Books) and it’s one of the best experiences I had reading a book in 2021.
In this episode we talk about:
Continue reading “Episode 293: The ‘Supremely Tiny Acts’ of Sonya Huber”
Sponsor love: West Virginia Wesleyan College’s MFA in Creative Writing
Hey, CNFers, Chip Scanlan is here!
Here’s a little ditty from his website:
I am a writer. An author. A writing coach who has helped thousands of writers discover the writer within us all.
And his new book Writers on Writing: Inside the Lives of 55 Distinguished Writers and Editors is out now. And for $10 on Kindle ($15 for paperback) you get insights from the likes of Susan Orlean, Bronwen Dickey, Tommy Tomlinson, David Finkel, Roy Peter Clark, Rosalind Bentley, and many, many more.
In the book, Chip (@chipscanlan) asks four questions of every person:
Continue reading “Episode 292: Chip Scanlan says, ‘A Writer is Someone Who Writes. Period.’”
Annelise Jolley and Zahara Gomez teamed up to create “A Feast for Lost Souls” for this month’s piece for The Atavist Magazine.
What an incredible story about a group of women who hunt for the bodies of their “disappeared” loved ones, but find ways to honor them through cooking. The Memory Recipe Book is what Zahara helped develop, along with the widows and mothers, to pay tribute to their lost sons and husbands.
Zahara also created a few mini-documentaries as part of this story to go along with Annelise’s incredible reporting and writing of the piece.
Continue reading “Episode 289: The Atavist’s ‘Feast for Lost Souls’ with Annelise Jolley and Zahara Gomez”
By Brendan O’Meara
After much deliberation and deep thoughts (haha), I’m taking the audio magazine 100% public.
Why?
Well, it comes down to reach. Writers want to be read (in this case heard). The Patreon audience is going to be significantly smaller than the public feed for the podcast.
Issue 1 was downloaded about 800 times. Issue 2 went out to about 15, 16 people, since it was Patreon-only.
I polled the Patreon audience because I didn’t want to violate their trust and what they signed up for. 100% of them said to take it to the largest possible audience.
They will get other goodies and perks as a result.
That’s a conversation for another time.
So, for now, enjoy original work from Jake Gronsky, whose essay deals with the end of his minor league baseball career, Krystina Wales, whose day at the beach reveals more than she bargained for, Carrie Hagen, whose found a savior in the unlikeliest of places, and Matthew Denis, who takes us to a special place of his childhood summers. Add to that three original poems from Jorah LaFleur, and you have you a summer-themed issue bound to warm you up.
Hope you brought your sunscreen!
The Patreon audience makes it possible to pay writers for their work, so please consider becoming a member and all that comes with it. Lots of bang-for-buck, IMO!
Sponsor love: West Virginia Wesleyan College’s MFA in Creative Writing
Ricky Tucker (@Rick_Tuck_Lit) is a writer, teacher, and voguer. That last one is significant because he’s the author of And the Category Is … : Inside New York’s Vogue, House, and Ballroom Community (Beacon Press).
In it, Ricky takes us into the subculture of ballroom and refuge and freedom it provided the LGBTQ+ community. In this conversation we talk about the fine line between appreciation and appropriation, house mothers and fathers, finding family, writing as service, and how Ricky found his way to being a writer.
Continue reading “Episode 288: And the Category Is … Ricky Tucker!”
Sponsor love: West Virginia Wesleyan College’s MFA in Creative Writing
Achy Obejas is a Cuban American writer, translator, and activist whose work focuses on personal and national identity.
She’s here to talk about her book of poetry Boomerang/Bumeran (Beacon Press), which is English and Spanish.
Achy also is the author of the novel Days of Awe and the story collection The Tower of the Antilles.
In this conversation, we talk about:
Continue reading “Episode 287: Boomerang with Achy Obejas”
Sponsor love: West Virginia Wesleyan College’s MFA in Creative Writing
This was a treat, getting to speak with Jen Winston, the debut author behind Greedy: Notes from a Bisexual Who Wants Too Much (Atria).
In this episode we talk about:
Continue reading “Episode 286: Jen Winston on Essay Collection as Memoir”
Jeannine Ouellette (@_elephantrock) is the author of the memoir The Part That Burns, a devastating book about childhood, sexual abuse, motherhood, and so much more. It’s published by Split/Lip Press.
It was a book I couldn’t wait to get back to because I needed to know how Jeannine managed to — I don’t know — survive. She broke my heart a number of times, but not in a self-pitying way.
In any case, she’s here for Ep. 281, this after we met at Hippocamp in August.
Here’s a little blurb from Jeannine’s website:
Continue reading “Episode 282: Jeannine Ouellette on Wanting to be Devastated, Self-Scrutiny, and Her Memoir ‘The Part That Burns’”
Sponsor love: West Virginia m Wesleyan College’s MFA in Creative Writing and The Facing Project’s Empathy Prize for Nonfiction
What a treat!
It’s Athena Dixon (@AthenaDDixon), the author of the essay collection The Incredible Shrinking Woman (Split Lip Press).
Had a great chat about day jobs and threading the work you want to do around that, how there’s no “writer’s life,” but rather just a “writer living.” That’s a direct quote from her Hippocamp talk this year.
Her essay collection delves into her identity as a Black woman, divorce, relationships, sex, the masks we where, and so on. Highly recommend.
Continue reading “Episode 279: Athena Dixon on Opening Doors, Day Jobs, and the Personal Essay”
Allison K. Williams is back! (@guerillamemoir) She is here to talk about her incredible new craft book Seven Drafts: Self-Edit Like a Pro from Blank Page to Book, a book that digs into the nitty gritty of editing.
What is so great about this book is you can be a seasoned, skilled writer/editor and this book will level you up. The book is a gift, and so too is Allison.
She’s the 2021 Literary Citizen of the Year for Hippocamp. She’s also the social media editor (?) for Brevity Magazine, and many of her craft essays for Brevity are adapted in Seven Drafts. Dig it.
In any case, we dig into lots of stuff about editing, story holes, retyping entire manuscripts, and what it means to cultivate a “writer’s life.”
Consider supporting the podcast and the audio magazine by heading to Patreon.com/cnfpod. There, you can earn transcripts, coaching, editing, and get exclusive access to the audio magazine.