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Episode 223: ‘Why Are You Making it, and Who is it for?’ with Kristen Meinzer

By Brendan O’Meara

“I spend a lot of time thinking about promotion. This isn’t Field of Dreams,” says Kristen Meinzer, @kristenmeinzer on Twitter.

You might remember Kristen from her first soiree on the podcast a few months ago when she and Jolenta Greenberg came by to talk about the book they co-wrote, How to be Fine.

She’s back for a solo show to talk about her book So You Want to Start a Podcast: Finding Your Voice, Telling Your Story, and Building a Community that Will Listen (William Morrow, 2019).

I’m self-taught, been doing this thing for eight years, and I found so many incredible nuggets in this book. The thing is, it’s ostensibly about podcasting, but you can apply the principles to anything.

We talk about structure in writing and in podcasting, why are you starting a podcast and who is it for, pet peeves in podcasting, mistakes new producers make, promoting a show, and what exactly a producer does.

Good stuff.

Please subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts, tell a friend, and consider leaving a kind review on Apple Podcasts. Keep the conversation going on social media. It’s @CNFPod across Twitter, IG, and FB.

Kristen’s Bookshelf for the Apocalypse or Library for the End of the World (in pictures!)

Leave the show a voicemail and I’ll answer your question on the show!

Gotta get that monthly newsletter! Here’s a link to the archive. It only goes back to March 2019, but you’ll get the drift.

Episode 213: Tornados, BDSM Potlucks? Welcome to Tomboyland with Melissa Faliveno

Melissa Faliveno. Photo Credit: Maggie Walsh

By Brendan O’Meara

Stepping up to the plate this week is Melissa Faliveno (@melissafaliveno), author of Tomboyland, a collection of essays published by Topple Books.

It’s a love letter to her midwest roots and the topics are so wide ranging, yet have this connective tissue that once you’re in the thick of reading it you like “How the fuck did she do this?”

Seriously.

In this episode we talk about how she finds the groove, her workspace, the books she keeps on her desk, softball, BDSM, and F5 tornados.

Keep the conversation going on social media @CNFPod across them all. If you feeling kind, link up to the show and consider leaving a review on Apple Podcasts. A complimentary editing consult awaits you: Just screenshot your review, email it to the show, and I’ll reach back out.

You’ll also want to subscribe to my monthly newsletter that goes on the first of the month. Book recommendations, cool articles, podcasts, and what you might have missed from the world of this podcast. First of the month. No spam. Can’t beat it.

Melissa’s work has appeared in Bitch magazine, the Millions, Prairie Schooner, Isthmus, DIAGRAM, Midwestern Gothic, and Green Mountains Review. She’s a Best American Essays notable writer as well.

Please enjoy this conversation, friend.

Episode 201: Walter Thompson-Hernandez on Journalism as Ethnography in ‘The Compton Cowboys’

By Brendan O’Meara

Man, what a show we’ve got for you with Walter Thompson-Hernandez. He is a Los Angeles-based writer who catapulted onto the scene with a feature he wrote about the Compton Cowboys.

It was one of those stories where as soon as published it blew up. Then agents are banging on his door, he’s got a book deal, movie deal and maybe the best of it all: a berth on The Creative Nonfiction Podcast: the show where I speak to badass people about the art and craft of telling true stories.

In speaking with Walter, it reminded me of conversations I had with Mike Sager, Eli Saslow and Maggie Messitt about taking deep dives into various subcultures (and I know I’m missing dozens who have been on this show).

Compton Cowboys is a brilliant book about a subculture tucked into the heart of Compton where, to quote the subhead of Walter’s NYT story, “A group of childhood friends wants to create a safer community and challenge the notion that African-Americans can’t be cowboys.”

I’d say more, but I don’t want to spoil this great conversation with Walter (@mychivas).

Dig the show? Keep the conversation going on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook @CNFPod.

Sign up for my monthly newsletter that goes on the first of every month. Reading recommendations and what you might have missed from the world of the podcast.

And consider leaving a kind review on Apple Podcasts and share the show if I’ve made something worth sharing.

Get after it, CNFers!

Episode 194: Michael Schulman — Driven by Joy, New Yorker Profiles, and the ‘Secret Word’

By Brendan O’Meara

“Selection is as creative as generation,” says Michael Schulman on the podcast.

Michael Schulman is a staff writer for The New Yorker and author of Her Again, a biography of the early life of Meryl Streep. Go check it out. I haven’t read it yet, as I came to Michael’s work through his profiles in The New Yorker.

As coincidence would have it, once I had lined up Michael to be on the show, he appeared on This American Life during the introduction to the Everyone’s a Critic show.

In any case, it was Michael’s profile on James Cordon that prompted me to reach out, but I also loved his work on Adam Driver and Bo Burnham as well.

In this show we talk about how his work is driven by joy, how he boils down each story down to a single, secret word, and how his background in theater led to his break at the magazine. Some great stuff here.

This episode is sponsored in part by Bay Path University’s MFA in Creative Nonfiction Writing.

Follow the podcast on social media @CNFPod across all the various platforms and sign up for that newsletter.

And did you listen to the long introduction to this episode yet? I’m publishing the first CNF Pod audio magazine with the theme Social Distancing: Essays from/of Isolation. Word limit is 2,000 as we want the reading to be 15 minutes or less. Email submissions to creativenonfictionpodcast at gmail dot com. DEADLINE IS MAY 1, 2020.

In this time of social distancing and isolation, hearing essays from this challenging time can bring us together. I hope you’ll submit your best work. I’d be honored to publish it three or four of however many submissions I receive.

OK, readyyyyyy, break!

PS: I’m having technical difficulties uploading photographs, so that’s why you haven’t seen author photos for the past few episodes. Hoping the host I pay money to will figure it out.

Episode 192: Paul Lisicky — The Book Teaches You What It Wants to Be

By Brendan O’Meara

Hey, CNFers, Paul Lisicky is back! He first came on the show in 2016 when his book The Narrow Door came out.

Now he’s back to talk about Later: My Life at the Edge of the World. Both are published by Graywolf Press.

What I particularly loved about Paul’s book is how hyper-local it is to a specific time and place. We can all learn how to best drill down on the specifics of a story by reading Paul’s latest book.

Thanks to Bay Path University and HippoCamp2020 for the support (use that CNFPOD2020 coupon code for $40 off your registration!).

Episode 191: Alexander Norman on the Journey of Finding Voice, Ghostwriting, and the Dalai Lama

By Brendan O’Meara

Alexander Norman is here to talk about his book The Dalai Lama: An Extraordinary Life (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2020).

In this conversation we talk about the challenge of finding a voice, how even after 30 years, Alexander is still trying to find it.

And, you know, the Dalai Lama.

We talk about how his time as an army officer influenced his writing, how to surrender to the story, and how he came to know the Dalai Lama.

I hope you’ll subscribe to the show if you already don’t. I do my best to make the best show for you. If you dig the show, consider leaving a kind review on Apple Podcasts. I’ll read it on the air as a way of saying thank you.

You can follow the show’s various social media channels. @CNFPod on IG, Twitter, and Facebook. Always nice to connect.

That reminds me. We all need editors. We all need editing. We all need accountability. If you’ve got an essay or a book that needs coaching I’d be honored and thrilled to serve you and your work. Email me brendan @ brendanomeara.com and let’s start a conversation because the world needs your work. We need you to show up and I want to help.

Books by Alexander

The Secret Lives of the Dalai Lama

Episode 190: Adrienne Brodeur on Taking Your Story Head On, Loosening the Grip on Your Narrative, and Her Memoir ‘Wild Game’

By Brendan O’Meara

One of the many things that struck me about this conversation I had with Adrienne Brodeur, author of Wild Game: My Mother, Her Lover, and Me, was what she said about confronting what was tough about relationship with her mother.

She said:

One of the great gifts of writing memoir or creative nonfiction, to do it well you have to kind of loosen the grip on your own narrative and you have to really do your best to understand what was driving other people in your story.

You have to take people in your life, people who likely affected you in some capacity, and approach it with empathy and understanding. By and large, these people we write about aren’t monsters. They were adults trying to get by.

We’re all just trying to get by and some of us are better at getting by than others.

In any case, I hope you enjoy this conversation with Adrienne. You could pair it with Natalie Singer, Vanya Erickson and Meredith May.

Thanks to Bay Path University’s MFA in Creative Nonfiction Writing for the support.

Also, if you want a $40 discount on your HippoCamp2020 registration fee, enter the promo code CNFPOD2020 at checkout. It’s the best money you’ll spend on a conference this year. In fact, I’ll be using that coupon code myself!

We all need editors. We all need editing. We all need accountability. If you’ve got an essay or a book that needs coaching I’d be honored and thrilled to serve you and your work. Email me brendan @ brendanomeara.com and let’s start a conversation because the world needs your work. We need you to show up and I want to help.

Episode 189: Damon Brown on ‘Bring Your Worth’ and the Secret Power of Cocktail Napkins

By Brendan O’Meara

You ready for a treat, CNFers? I’ve got Damon Brown for you this Valentine’s Day. Awwwww.

Damon has written several books, most self-published, but some not. His book Bring Your Worth is what prompted this conversation.

He’s in that vein of Jeff Goins, Austin Kleon and Chase Jarvis about how to get inspired to do your best work.

We met at HippoCamp 2019 and got to talking about a lot of the themes that you’ve come to love from this little podcast. Jeanette Hurt was also with us at the bar. Actually, I was with them since they’ve been creative partners for years and they co-talked a talk about earning money while you sleep. Passive Writer is the book they co-authored about it. Good stuff.

They were really sweet and attended my train wreck of a presentation. More on that another time.

Make sure you sign up for Damon’s newsletter, after mine 😉 and follow him on Twitter @browndamon.

That it? I think so.

Episode 188: Katherine Keith — Say Yes to Life

By Brendan O’Meara

You know the drill, CNFers, it’s The Creative Nonfiction Podcast and this week’s show features Katherine Keith, the badass behind Epic Solitude: A Story of Survival and a Quest for Meaning in the Far North (Black Stone Publishing, 2020).

In this conversation we talk about her capacity to carry her past, carry her tragedies with her and how she channelled that into something positive for her and her family.

As a heads up, this podcast is unedited. I did not have the time to grind on the edit. Nor will next week’s episode. But after that, I swear I’ll find the time to edit. I didn’t think you’d mind. 😉

Episode 187: Ander Monson — It’s Electric

By Brendan O’Meara

Ander Monson wrote a killer essay for True Story titled “My Monument.” He also edits DIAGRAM and runs a series of essay contests and competitions. He’s what you’d call a great literary citizen.

We talk his essay and a lot of other cool junk.

I love it when I have nearly instant chemistry with someone, and that was certainly the case with Ander. I only wish we had more time!

I love when previous guests pop up in a show, like Elisa Gabbert and Elena Passarello.

If you have any questions or concerns (you might after listening to my intro. Don’t worry. Things are cool. #riesling email the show creativenonfictionpodcast at gmail dot com. You may also find the show on Twitter, IG and Facebook, all @CNFPod.

If this show matters to you, please share with your CNFin’ friends and consider leaving a kind review on Apple Podcasts.

Books by Ander

I Will Take the Answer
Gnome Stories

Kristen’s Bookshelf for the Apocalypse or Library for the End of the World (in pictures!)

Leave the show a voicemail and I’ll answer your question on the show!

Brendan’s Monthly Newsletter: First of the month! No spam! Can’t beat it!

First of the month. No spam. Can’t beat it!

MONTHLY NEWSLETTER!: Once a Month. No Spam. Can’t Beat It.

MONTHLY NEWSLETTER!: Once a Month. No Spam. Can’t Beat It.

MONTHLY NEWSLETTER!: Once a Month. No Spam. Can’t Beat It.

Books by Alexander

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MONTHLY NEWSLETTER!: Once a Month. No Spam. Can’t Beat It.

MONTHLY NEWSLETTER!: Once a Month. No Spam. Can’t Beat It.

MONTHLY NEWSLETTER!: Once a Month. No Spam. Can’t Beat It.

Books by Ander

MONTHLY NEWSLETTER!: Once a Month. No Spam. Can’t Beat It.