Are you holding onto a railing? OK, good, Isaac Fitzgerald (@IsaacFitzgerald) is here, CNFers! He’s the author of the incredible memoir-in-essays Dirtbag, Massachusetts: A Confessional (Bloomsbury).
Isaac is a frequent contributor on The Today Show, offering book recommendations to the masses. His CV has The Rumpus, McSweeney’s, BuzzFeed Books, among others. He’s also the author of How to be a Pirate, Pen and Ink, and Knives and Ink.
Continue reading “Episode 353: Isaac Fitzgerald”
By Brendan O’Meara
Are you a New Jersey hater? We’ve heard all the jokes, but if you want to know what Jersey is REALLY about, you need to check out Kerri Sullivan‘s (@ksulphoto) New Jersey Fan Club: Artists and Writers Celebrate the Garden State (Rutgers University Press).
It features essays by Jen A. Miller, Scott Neumyer, and Chris Gethard. There are comics, photos, interviews, it’s pretty damn great.
Continue reading “Episode 325: Kerri Sullivan”
Ruby McConnell (@RubyGoneWild) is the author of Ground Truth: A Geological Survey of a Life and A Woman’s Guide to the Wild, and she returns to the podcast (on short notice!) to talk about being in between projects, finding hope through writing, and being frustrated despite having an objectively productive year.
As you know, you can keep the conversation going on Twitter @BrendanOMeara or @CNFPod. Let me know what you dug about this episode, or other ones.
And if you’re feeling especially froggy, you can support the show by heading over to patreon.com/cnfpod and see what tier appeals to you. Transcripts, questions, coaching, and the knowledge that your dollars get fed right back into the community. I was able to pay the essay and poem writers because of the Patreon community. That’s cool, right?
Newsletters sub is below. You’re gonna want to sign up for that and subvert the algorithm. I’ve got some cool stuff planned that will be like the CNFin’ Happy Hour, but somehow better, and it all stems from the newsletter. Once a month. No spam. Can’t beat it!
It’s that time!
For Issue 3 of the audio magazine, the theme is HEROES. Hero worship. Hero sandwiches. Fallen idols. Should you meet your heroes? Superheroes. Is Batman a superhero? HEROES!
I want your best essays on heroes. Essays are meant to be read aloud and should be no longer than 2,000 words.
Email with HERO in the subject line your best essay to creativenonfictionpodcast at gmail dot com.
Deadline is Nov. 1, 2021! DEADLINE IS DECEMBER 31, 2021
This issue, like Issue 2, is available to members of the Patreon community. This is what allows me to pay writers for their work should I accept their essays.
If you like what we’re doing with the interview product, as well as the audio magazine, then please become a member. Check it out: patreon.com/cnfpod.
John O’Connor is here to talk about his essay “Everything Gets Worse,” Issue 32 of Creative Nonfiction’s True Story.
In this episode we talk about the genesis of this essay, what it says about him and finding a donkey for your story.
Towards the end, he also brings up Jenny Odell and wanting to read her book How to Do Nothing. You can listen to my conversation with Jenny if you’d like. No presh. You might also like Eric Ducker, who wrote a great profile on Jenny for The Ringer.
Support the show by linking up to it on your social platforms, engaging with the show on Twitter, IG or Facebook, and consider leaving a review or rating on Apple Podcasts. We’re real close to 100. Let’s get there and see what happens.
“Every piece of writing is going to be hard in some way, and you just have to know that, and sit with it and keep going forward, and you will have a breakthrough at some point if you don’t give up.” —Kate Hopper
By Brendan O’Meara
Hey, there, CNFers, Kate Hopper (@MNKateHopper) joins me to talk about her True Story essay “Stumbling into Joy.” In case you couldn’t tell from the title of this episode, she learns to play the bass guitar in her forties. It’s pretty rad.
Please subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts. We’re on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify and Stitcher. It is always my hope that I’ve made something worth sharing, so if you like this, please pass it along to the people you think would benefit from it. You are the social network.
As always, keep the conversation going on Twitter @CNFPod and Instagram @cnfpod. Also Facebook, so go like the page there. I respond to everything, so please tag the show on your preferred network and we’ll connect.
Thanks to Goucher’s MFA in Nonfiction, Bay Path University’s MFA in Creative Nonfiction, and River Teeth for the support.
By Brendan O’Meara
Tweetables by Leanna James Blackwell (@baypathmfaCNF)
“Don’t worry if you go through a fallow period. It doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with you.”
“When that idea comes, don’t wait, grab it, run.”
Okay, this is The Creative Nonfiction Podcast, the show where I talk to badass writers (like Laura Hillenbrand), filmmakers (like Emer Reynolds), and producers (like Alexandra DiPalma) about the art and craft of telling true stories, how they became who they are, and the habits and routines that make them special, so maybe you can apply those tools of mastery to your own work.
We got Leanna James Blackwell for you today, for episode 135 of this racket. But we’ll get there. We’re gonna talk about a lot of things, and especially her long essay “Lethe” which appeared as Issue No. 22 of Creative Nonfiction’s True Story. I love these little things, man. You should subscribe. That’s a free shout out if I ever heard one.
Continue reading “Episode 135—Leanna James Blackwell Talks About Fallow Periods, Running with Ideas, and 90s Grunge”
By Brendan O’Meara
“Getting to know who someone is, going into their world, when I research someone I feel like I’m entering their world and almost becoming them and seeing the world through their eyes in an effort to figure out what’s important for them to talk about.” —Debbie Millman (@debbiemillman)
Welcome CNFers, I’m @BrendanOMeara, Brendan O’Meara in real life and this is @CNFPod, or The Creative Nonfiction Podcast, the show where I speak to badass writers, filmmakers, and producers about the art and craft of telling true stories.
If you want to get better at the form, you’ve come to the right place. This is our little corner of the Internet. If you’re here for the first time, welcome, welcome, crack open a notebook, pour yourself a cup of coffee and settle in, CNFers. You’re gonna find we do things a little different on this show.
Where to start? My guest is Debbie Millman. Yes, you heard that correctly. Your ears did not deceive you. I didn’t bother digging too deep into Debbie’s origin story because there are several podcasts where she dives into that and I wanted to spare her from repeating herself. Maybe I was too timid in that regard, but I figured I’d steer the ship toward other things.
At this point in the introduction is usually where I riff on what’s going on, maybe offer some insights into how you can improve your work by sharing something I find helpful. But…sometimes the most helpful thing is getting the f*ck out of the way.
In seventeen words Debbie Millman is a writer, designer, educator, artist, brand consultant, and host of the podcast Design Matters.
But in a single word? Debbie is an inspiration. She made a name for herself as a graphic designer and branding guru after years and years of rejections, failures, and false starts. She’s persistent sometimes, she admits, to a fault.
Her writing is tight and playful. It’s deep, meaningful, resonant, and beautiful to look at as most of her essays are illustrated in her whimsical way of inking and penciling.
As for her career in branding, if you’ve seen the Burger King logo, various Pepsi products, Tropicana, Haagen Daas, and Twizzlers (totally twisted), then you’ve seen her work. If it makes the supermarket look prettier, odds are Debbie had a hand in that.
She was the president of Sterling Brands for 20 years, and under her stewardship grew the company from 15 employees to 150.
But after a decade of being a titan in her field, from 1995 to 2005, often at the expense of her own creative projects, her writing, her drawing, her painting, she was granted the opportunity to host an internet radio program that, I must add, she had to pay to produce, called Design Matters. This was in 2005.
Fourteen years later and she’s still doing it and for my money she, along with Joe Donahue of WAMC Northeast Public Radio, are the best interviewers around. I have a reason for this and I talk about this with Debbie.
She has interviewed Milton Glaser, Malcolm Gladwell, Anne Lamott, Seth Godin, Shepard Fairey, and hundreds more. Design Matters is a testament to her endurance and generosity. It wasn’t until she had done the show for several years that it really began to gain traction, win awards, and become the behemoth that it is today.
I could go on and on and I must apologize for my titanic nerves in this episode. I mean, I suffer from them all the time, but this one was especially bad, for that I’m sorry, but getting the chance to speak to Debbie for nearly an hour was such an esteemed honor that I had trouble keeping my you-know-what together.
Okay, I hope you dig what Debbie and I made for you. Enjoy….
If you haven’t already, consider subscribing to The Creative Nonfiction Podcast on iTunes, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher and subvert the algorithms across the social platforms. If you liked the show, share it with just one friend. Email them the link or share it on social media. And tag me @BrendanOMeara and @CNFPod so I can toast to your awesomeness.
Consider leaving an honest review on iTunes as well. I want to see it hit 100 ratings. We’re gonna get there in 2019, but it starts with you. If you have five minutes to spare, please give the show some love.
Thanks to our sponsors in Goucher College’s MFA in Nonfiction as well as Creative Nonfiction Magazine.
How to Think Like a Great Graphic Designer
The Essential Principles of Graphic Design
Look Both Ways
Brand Thinking and Other Noble Pursuits
Brand Bible
Self-Portrait As Your Traitor
Leave Me Alone with the Recipes
By Brendan O’Meara
Tweetables from Jamie Zvirzdin (@jamiezvirzdin):
“To be sincere is to be powerful and creative nonfiction allows me to do that, to be sincere.”
“I don’t want to be content with what I know.”
“I don’t believe in ghosts, the afterlife, and I don’t believe in the muse. I believe in hard work.”
Hey CNFers, hope you’re having a CNFin’ good week.
It’s The Creative Nonfiction Podcast, the show where I speak to the world’s best artists about creating works of nonfiction: leaders in the world of personal essay, memoir, narrative journalism, documentary film, and radio and try to tease out origins, habits, and craft so you can experiment with any cool nuggets you hear. Continue reading “Episode 85—Jamie Zvirzdin on Sincerity, Permission, and Hard Work”
Hey, there CNFers, Happy New Year! It’s 2018 and we’re gettin’ rollin’ here for the biggest, baddest year for The Creative Nonfiction Podcast. It’s got a new Twitter thingy.
And what is The Creative Nonfiction Podcast? It’s the show where I speak to the world’s best artists about creating works of nonfiction: leaders in the worlds of narrative journalism, documentary film, radio, essay and memoir, and tease out the habits and routines so that you can apply their tools of mastery to your own work. Continue reading “Episode 82—The Language of the Gods”