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Pre-order “The Front Runner”

By Brendan O’Meara

“Elegant biography… O’Meara’s loving portrait also celebrates Prefontaine’s legacy off the field, most notably his campaign against the Amateur Athletic Union’s rules disqualifying athletes who attempted to monetize their success. Nimble and comprehensive, this is a stirring tribute to a generational runner gone too soon.” — Publisher’s Weekly

Hey, CNFers, what you’re seeing is the beautiful, brilliant book cover of The Front Runner: The Life of Steve Prefontaine, set to come out by Mariner Books on May 20, 2025, ten days shy of the 50th anniversary of Steve Prefontaine’s death (spoiler alert).

This is the pre-order link: https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-front-runner-brendan-omeara?variant=43044900962338

You can use it to pre-order from your favorite online bookseller be it Bookshop.org or … Amazon¹.

We all know that pre-orders help determine to what extent the publisher is willing to invest in their talent². I suspect you’re plenty sick of getting barraged by authors like me begging — and make no mistake, it’s begging — for pre-orders. Not only is it expensive ($32.99) but you have to then wait five months.

Anyway, consider pre-ordering a few copies. If you order five or more for your reading group, I’ll be sure to do some kind of Zoom chat. Email me the receipt and we’ll coordinate a time.

So many people make a book happen. Editors, designers, sales team, media teams. I hope you’ll consider buying it as it supports the entire enterprise, not just the little keyboard troll.

Thank you so much.

Here’s the thing: We can all agree that Amazon sucks ass for authors, but most people buy their books from Amazon. I still buy books (Kindle primarily … I hate clutter) from Amazon. I’m never going to hate on anyone who buys one of my books from Amazon. No sense in shaming any book sale. ↩︎
Here’s the thing: We can all agree that this is ass-backwards. The publisher, seeing a robust pre-order binge then doubles down on the talent. It’s a chalk-eating-weasel (horse racing term) move, betting the house on an even-money favorite. ↩︎

Episode 463: Leah Sottile on Building Scenes, Sagging Middles, and the Fever Dream of the American New Age

Friday, April 18, 2025

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Also, from May 28 to June 1, the Archer City Writing Workshops at the Larry McMurtry Literary Center are having a workshop called FEature Writing: The REconstructed Narrative, led by Kim H. Cross, Hampton Sides, and Glenn Stout. Visit lmcmurtrylitcenter.org/events to learn more. No, I don’t get kickbacks or commissions. So get your cynical head out of your ass. It’s not always about money, man.

Well, we did it, man, we did it again. The second live taping of The Creative Nonfiction Podcast happened at Gratitude Brewing.

This with Leah Sottile, making her fourth return to the podcast, this time to celebrate her new book Blazing Eye Sees All: Love Has Won, False Prophets, and the Fever Dream of the American New Age. It’s published by Grand Central.

Episode 462: On Podcasting and Gardens with Debbie Millman

Friday, April 11, 2025

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C’mon, really? Debbie Millman (@debbiemillman on IG) not only appeared here for Ep. 462, but it’s her third trip to CNF Pod HQ (her first and second are here and here). It’s when people return — and by all accounts seem happy to return — that validates the enterprise all the more.

Debbie has a new book out, Love Letter to a Garden (Timber Press), which is a bountiful book with her tight, concise, philosophical voice, much of it in her beautiful hand lettering. The book also has recipes from her wife, Roxane Gay. You may have heard of her.

Episode 461: For Nick Davidson, Stories Hunt the Storyteller

Friday, April 4, 2025

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Nick Davidson, @nickgdavidson on IG, a freelance journalist, says, “We usually think of hunting stories and looking for ideas, but I feel like it’s the other way around: stories hunt the storyteller, and I’m just prey.”

I love that sentiment.

Nick is on the show to talk about his piece for The Atavist Magazine titled “The Balloon that Fell From the Sky.” It’s a remarkable and tragic story of a gas balloon race where one of the teams was shot out of the sky by a Belarusian helicopter. It’s a gripping story that Nick spent the better part of three years reporting and writing.

Episode 460: Pulitzer Prize-Winning Biographer Megan Marshall Takes on Personal Essays in ‘After Lives’

Friday, March 28, 2025

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“You can’t think of anything more pleasing, I guess, to a biographer, than that they would be able to look in the coffin of their subject, but I did,” says Megan Marshall, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 2014 for Margaret Fuller: A New American Life. Her latest book, After Lives: On Biography and the Mysteries of the Human Heart (Mariner Books) takes a more personal turn.

She’s also the author of Elizabeth Bishop: A Miracle for Breakfast and The Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticism (a Pulitzer finalist).

Episode 459: Cassidy Randall Talks Forgotten Histories, Sticky Notes, and the Power of Listening

Friday, March 21, 2025

FINAL WEEK!!! Promotional support is brought to you by the Power of Narrative Conference, celebrating its 26th year on the last weekend of March 28 and 29. 300-400 journalists from around the world are coming. Keynote speakers Susan Orlean, Connie Schultz, Dan Zak and Connie Chung will deliver the knowledge. Listeners of this podcast can get 15% off your enrollment fee by using the code CNF15. To learn more visit combeyond.bu.edu … and use that CNF15 code.

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Companion podstack.

“I could suddenly see — and this is how I know when I’m supposed to start writing — is that words start putting themselves together in my head, and I just have to get them out, right? Which doesn’t happen all the time, but it did for this,” says Cassidy Randall, author of the masterpiece new book Thirty Below: The Harrowing and Heroic Story of the First All-Women’s Ascent of Denali (Abrams Books).

Cassidy has been on the podcast before (and she be on a third time in about two months since she has ANOTHER Atavist story coming out).

Cassidy (@_cassidyrandall) is an adventure and outdoors writer, primarily, and focuses much of her reportorial eye on women, who for so long were discounted as “weaker” in every sense of the word. And it’s Cassidy’s writing of Thirty Below that illustrated just how ignorant and misogynistic the establishment was (and, likely, still is to a degree).

Episode 458: Jaydra Johnson Had to Get Weird

Friday, March 14, 2025

Promotional support is brought to you by the Power of Narrative Conference, celebrating its 26th year on the last weekend of March 28 and 29. 300-400 journalists from around the world are coming. Keynote speakers Susan Orlean, Connie Schultz, Dan Zak and Connie Chung will deliver the knowledge. Listeners of this podcast can get 15% off your enrollment fee by using the code CNF15. To learn more visit combeyond.bu.edu … and use that CNF15 code.

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Jaydra Johnson‘s debut essay collection, Low: Notes on Art & Trash, isn’t what you’d expect. At least it wasn’t what I was expecting heading into it.

It was judged by Maggie Nelson and won the Fonograf essay collection contest. Here’s a tidbit of what Maggie had to say about it:

“Jaydra Johnson’s Low is part instruction manual, part genealogy, part art criticism, and part memoir–all of it pushing with urgency and necessity. It’s written in wry, straight-ahead prose that hits no false notes, and feels honest and earned at every juncture … I found myself rooting hard for its narrator – while also realizing that there is no need, as she has clearly found her way, and is now our teacher.”

Episode 457: Poynter’s Neil Brown Says Editing Isn’t Discussed Enough

Friday, March 14, 2025

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If you’re an editing nut, a reporting nut, a journalism nut, you’re in luck. Neil Brown, president of the Poynter Institute, has been in the journalism racket for four decades with tours at the Miami Herald and being on the Pulitzer Prize Board.

Episode 456: Neko Case Wrote Her Memoir in Bed

Friday, March 7, 2025

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Neko Case is here! She’s a founding member of The New Pornographers and a Grammy-nominated musical artist. Her debut memoir is The Harder I Fight the More I Love You (Grand Central).

Had a fine time chatting about childhood, empathy, exercises in memory, and writing in your bed.

Episode 455: Will McGrath’s Season on the Sidelines for The Believer

Friday, March 7, 2025

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Will McGrath says, “I’ve heard people describe anthropology as deep hanging out. It’s the the minutia of everyday life. It’s the quotidian stuff that is actually really interesting.”

Will wrote a brilliant reported essay for The Believer Magazine as he followed a cast of young men and their basketball season titled “American Boys.” If you loved Darcy Frey‘s book The Last Shot, you’ll love Will’s piece.