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Episode 312: Meredith May

Ever have a dog that fundamentally changed the course of your life? One who disrupted just about everything you knew about dogs and about yourself and about your marriage?

Meredith May has the book for you in Loving Edie: How a Dog Afraid of Everything Taught Me to be Brave (Park Row Books).

Meredith thought she knew just about all there was to know about raising a golden retriever puppy, but Edie came along and showed everyone that dogs are very much individuals and sometimes we have to accommodate them. They don’t always integrate neatly into our lives.

Great book. You might also like The Honey Bus, her 2019 memoir about her grandfather and bees and so much more.

In this conversation, we talk about writing community, lifting people up, opening doors, changing expectations around dogs, the privilege of being able to afford the care some need, and lots more.

Episode 311: Jane Friedman

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Jane Friedman came back, CNFers!

She’s practically running a school for writers with the incredible offerings she has over at janefriedman.com. If you want to be a better writer and, more importantly, have a greater understanding of what it means to marry your art with commerce, Jane’s work is required.

Though we didn’t delve into book proposals, a CNFin’ faux pas if there ever was one (my b), but I had taken a book proposal refresher with her as part of Creative Nonfiction Magazine’s offerings. She’s a pro. (@janefriedman)

So we dig into plenty of stuff that’s germane to your journey like author platform, building a newsletter audience, social media (and its trappings) and the tension you can glean from a show like Better Call Saul.

Episode 310: Leah Flickinger

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By Brendan O’Meara

It’s not often this show features stone-cold, bad ass editors. But that’s what we bring you today. I’m sure Leah Flickinger (@LeahFlickinger) will recoil at the remark, but it’s true.

She has edited pieces that made their way to Best American Sports Writing, won the National Magazine Award, and, oh, by the way, the Pulitzer Prize.

Yeah, that thing.

That was “Twelve Minutes and a Life” by Mitchell S. Jackson about the life and murder of Ahmaud Arbery. Leah edited Kim H. Cross’s incredible story “Leon + Noel” with the now-famous palindrome structure. (Don’t try this at home, kids).

So Leah is here to talk about how she developed these pieces and how she frames conversations with writers to get the most out of them and the pieces they’re working on.

Episode 308: The Year the Mountain of Manure Was Hit by a Flood

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By Brendan O’Meara

Hey CNFers, welcome to CNF Pod, the creative nonfiction podcast, the show where I usually speak to badass people about the art and craft of telling true stories. I say usually because this week I don’t have a guest.

Booooo…

Hey, hey, hey before you start hurling tomatoes up that the stage, hear me out. My guest this week wasn’t feeling good so we had to reschedule. You might be like, “BO, thought you had some of these in the can. Get your house in order.” And yes, in an ideal world I have a few in the can, but you’d be surprised how many of these interviews are done the week of and packaged soon thereafter.

I could’ve scrambled for a guest but I wanted to try something new. I don’t think this’ll be a regular thing in the podcast feed. I DO think it’ll be a normal thing for the Patreon crew so consider heading to patreon.com/cnfpod to support the podcast to get special podcasts like this one you’re about to hear.

So what’s the deal? In an effort to up the production value and to make the show seem a little bit more zippy, I’ve always been inspired by the structure of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. Here are these episodes that focus on one guest, they film all day, so hours and hours of footage, for what, 15 minutes of final product? What must that edit be like?

Episode 307: Greg Brennecka

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By Brendan O’Meara

Ever been starved for knowledge about meteorites? You came to the right place!

Greg Brennecka is a cosmochemist studying meteoritics and the author of Impact: How Space Rocks Led to Life, Culture, and Donkey Kong. It’s published by William Morrow.

Greg is wicked smaht and works as a staff scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. He received the prestigious Sofia Kovalevskaja Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in 2014 to study the early Solar System at the Institute for Planetology in Munster, Germany, where he led the Solar System Forensics group for five years. His research has appeared in Science, Nature, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

We talk about how the moon formed, how meteorites shaped our culture, and how he goes about snagging a space rock for his research.

The show’s Instagram handle, @creativenonfictionpodcast, and you can always keep the conversation going on Twitter @CNFPod.

And you know I’d rather you sign up for my Up-to-11 Newsletter. Here’s the latest. Signup form is below you and to your right. Book recs, book raffles, cool stuff curated by me for you, CNFin’ happy hour or writing group, writing prompts, fun and entertaining. First of the month. No spam. Can’t beat it.

Consider supporting the show via Patreon patreon.com/cnfpod. Shop around if you want to support the community. I just paid out the writers from the last audio magazine. You make that possible. The show is free but it ain’t cheap.

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Subscribe and download and share across your socials. And don’t forget to consider leaving a kind review on Apple Podcasts. Those go a LONG way.

Episode 306: Dan Schwartz

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By Brendan O’Meara

Dan Schwartz (@CODanSchwartz) is an investigative journalist.

Good night, everybody! Get home safe!

…

OK, but, for real, Dan is a freelance journo whose most recent piece came out in the Atlantic. It deals with climate change and how local meteorologists are the best vectors for convincing the skeptics about the climate cancer. Read it here.

Fun fact: I wrote about a local weatherman. Not as adeptly as Dan handles his piece for the Atlantic, but, hey, I’m a man in the arena, bruh.

Episode 305: Matt Bell

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By Brendan O’Meara

Matt Bell (@mdbell79) is here. Why? He’s got a great craft book out called Refuse to be Done: How to Write and Rewrite a Novel in Three Drafts.

What a great handbook to walk you through the generative pages and then the arduous task — the REAL work — of refining, rewriting, and revising.

This book will teach you patience.

This book will teach you perserverance.

This book will teach you the meaning of work.

Episode 303: Damon Brown

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By Brendan O’Meara

“From the rooter to the tooter,” writes Damon Brown in his new book Career Remix: Get the Gig You Want with the Skills You’ve Got (Sterling).

He writes that his southern African American relatives would often get the scraps of the pig, and they’d have to get creative and use everything. I’ll let you connect the dots. What Damon means is, “There is nothing wasted.”

And so we’ve come to his new book about parlaying the skills you’ve got into any gig you want.

This is Damon’s third trip back to the podcast and he always brings it. He’s the author of more than twenty books including Bring Your Worth and The Bite-Sized Entrepreneur.

He’s got a great YouTube show at youtube.com/browndamon. You can find him on Twitter @browndamon and LinkedIn.

Episode 302: Neda Toloui-Semnani

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By Brendan O’Meara

If you’re like me, you like a memoir where the author is hunting for something. Neda Toloui-Semnani is on a quest of sorts in They Said They Wanted Revolution: A Memoir of My Parents (Little a, 2022).

Neda’s father was an Iranian revolutionary who was executed in the early 1980s by the shah’s regime. Neda was a toddler at the time. Neda’s mother and father were part of the protests in Berkley, California and mobilized for change.

While in Iran in the early 80s, Neda recounts the harrowing story of how she and her family escaped Iran after her father was arrested. This book is nuanced and layered and a wonderful read.

Episode 301: Debbie Millman

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Sponsor love: West Virginia Wesleyan College’s MFA in Creative Writing

By Brendan O’Meara

Can you believe it? Debbie Millman has returned the CNF Pod main stage with a new ~~album~~ book called Why Design Matters: Conversations with the World’s Most Creative People (Porchlight Books, 2022).

Debbie might be most known for her incredible work in branding, where at one point or another in her illustrious career she had “touched” roughly 25% of most things on the grocery store shelves. She worked on Burger King’s logo, Tropicana, Twizzlers, and more.

But I know Debbie because of her amazing podcast Design Matters. It started in 2005 and has developed over the years to be one of the greatest interview shows in the podcast-o-sphere. As you know, there are quite a bit.

There are two faces on Mt. Podmore and it’s Debbie Millman and Joe Donahue. That’s it.

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