Episode 257: From the Backside to the Vatican with Joe Drape

Joe Drape

By Brendan O’Meara

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Joe Drape is back to talk about his latest book, The Saint Makers: Inside the Catholic Church and How a War Hero Inspired a Journey of Faith.

Joe is a sports writer for The New York Times covering college football and horse racing, among other feature assignments.

In this episode we talk about diagramming stories the way you would diagram a sentence and

Joe is the author of several books including American Pharoah, Our Boys, and Black Maestro.

I want to give a shoutout to Hippocamp 2021! It is happening! Registration opens May 15. It’s a writers’ conference for CNFers like you. Check it out.

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Episode 165: Steven Kurutz—The Power of Libraries, Getting to New York, and ‘Fruitland’

By Brendan O’Meara

Welcome back, CNFers! The 301 Redirect is live so you should be getting that bump of CNF now in your feeds. Sorry about that missed week there. Things got broke. Acutally, things are still mildly broken with some older episodes. The podcast gremlins are on it.

Steven Kurutz is here. He’s a features writer for The New York Times, and it was his essay for Creative Nonfiction’s True Story, “Fruitland,” that made me want to reach out.

This was a fun one and I hope you dig it. If you do, please share it with your immediate network. That’s how I want this show to keep growing, not by interrupting people with Facebook ads, but by you deciding it has value and sharing it with your friends. Hand to hand. You’re the social network, man.

If you dig the show, consider leaving a review on Apple Podcasts.

Keep the conversation going on Twitter @CNFPod. Let me know your thoughts. Podcast for your thoughts.

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Episode 10—Joe DePaulo on Talese, Kramer, and What It Means to be Edited

Written by Brendan O’Meara

“There’s no downplaying that moment for me. There’s no humble bragging that. It’s a straight-up brag, a measure of pride for me.”—Joe DePaulo

“I can’t abandon it. For me, I don’t know what else I’d do.” —Joe DePaulo

Maybe my favorite part of my conversation with Joe happens toward the end where we briefly touch upon drafting one particular writer in a Fantasy League for Narrative Nonfiction. I should’ve expanded on this, but I figure it’s going to be a much longer segment in the future.

This was a fun one. We talked about writers who inspired Joe and the harsh financial realties of the freelance game. (You can hear Episode 9 guest John Scheinman shed insights into this as well.)

I’ve shortened by Bookshelf for the Apocalypse segment to five books. Good stuff here.

Joe’s BftA

The Complete Works of Shakespeare
Character Studies by Mark Singer
Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt
The Best American Sports Writing of the Century
Joe DiMaggio: The Hero’s Life by Richard Ben Cramer
Billy Bathgate by E.L. Doctorow

Ricky Jay’s Magical Secrets by Mark Singer is a New Yorker profile Joe re-reads over and over again.
The Man Who Knew Too Much by Marie Brenner

Here’s Joe’s SB Nation Longform archive, which includes his profile on Mike Francesa, a story that earned Joe a notable selection in the 2014 volume of Best American Sports Writing.

So let’s get to it. Enjoy!

Hey, if you get a chance subscribe to the podcast on iTunes and throw down your email here at the website. I know that’s asking a lot, but it would mean a lot to me.