Friday, April 18, 2025
Become a Patron!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.
I’m holding a hardback copy that I bought, had Leah sign, to raffle off to listeners who follow the Instagram page. I put out a few rules, you know, the classic, like this, follow this, tag someone, and you’re entered to win. One person did it correctly. Nice to see that the image got next to no impressions even though it was shared to my followers and Leah’s, so like 2,500 total and like 10 people liked it and one person followed instructions. So, the writer Lori Sebastianutti appears to be the clubhouse leader. When one raffle ticket gets entered, is it even a raffle?
Leah, man, it’s crazy how this podcast gives me a real sense of kinship and friendship with the people who have been on the show … and I’ve met maybe ten-20 of them? I met Leah for the first time and it was like were had known each other for years. And we kinda have … so we just met as if we hadn’t seen each other in a few months vs. say, the first time ever. Pretty cool.
There’s now a weekly companion podstack at creativenonfictionpodcast.substack.com. If you want the transcripts and the text for the parting shot and deep dives into the archives, this is the newsletter to enrichen your podcast experience. It’s pretty cool, you should get drunk on it.
Leah Sottile is a freelance journalist whose work has appeared in The Atavist Magazine, High Country News, Outside Magazine, and the Washington Post. She’s the lead producer reporter for Bundyville, Burn Wild, and Hush, her latest podcast with Oregon Public Broadcasting. She’s the author of the Oregon Book Award Finalist When the Moon Turns to the Blood and, I hate to say it, but I’m sorry that The Front Runner will be going head to head with her for the Oregon Book Award. It’s Prefontaine vs. New Ageism, it doesn’t get anymore Oregon than that.
In this conversation we talk about:
- The work of John Vaillant (See Ep. 376(
- How writing this book made Leah crazy
- How New Ageism and Far Right Extremism overlap
- Sagging Middles
- And not re-victimizing sources
- And much more…
Great stuff …
