Home of The Creative Nonfiction Podcast

Episode 449: Drew Philp Wants to Make Spanakopita Out of Spinach News

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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It’s that Atavistian time of the month and this month’s story is heavy and chronicles what is likely, probably, a genocide in Tigray, Ethiopia … the hospital was overrun with victims. The medical staff risked everything to treat the wounded and believe the world ignored a genocide.

Drew Philp (@drewphilp.bsky.social) is the journalist behind “There Will Be No Mercy,” and we talk about how he pitched this as ER only in an Ethiopian hospital as that population endured unthinkable indignities. And this isn’t a historical piece. This happened within the last five years. Yeah. It’s a courageous piece of reporting, but even more courageous of the people at the heart of the story who literally are risking their lives to have this story told.

Episode 448: Evan Ratliff Returns … Or Did He?

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[Downloadable Transcript TK, CNFers]

Very nice to welcome Evan Ratliff (@ev_rat_public) back to the program, the special occasion being his incredible podcast Shell Game, the show where Evan created an AI voice agent in his own image and set it loose on the world.

It raises many questions about the ethics and the utility of the increasingly sophisticated world of voice agents. It won’t be too far into the future where they will be indistinguishable from actual humans.

A running writer’s companion

Listen … I am of fleeting attention. One minute I will say this is the greatest idea/hobby in the history of the world and think I should do it for the rest of my life.

Thirty minutes later say, ah, that was stupid.

So! My latest whim is to train for twelve weeks to run a simple 13.1 miles here in Eugene. The registration fee is $140, which is bonkers gross (and a reason I once flirted a little more than a year ago with an unsanctioned “race” that never came to pass on account of heat and wildfire smoke). The winter is a great time to run in Oregon. It’s chilly, wet, and the air quality is, by and large, pretty damn good.

Episode 447: Brooke Champagne Sits Back from the Suckitude

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By Brendan O’Meara

Brooke Champagne (@champagne_brooke) knows many things, but maybe most of all is that feeling of being able to sit and labor through shitty writing to get to the good writing. And get to the good writing she did in her brilliant essay collection Nola Face: A Latina’s Life in the Big Easy (University of Georgia Press).

You can’t put this essay collection in a box, unless that box is titled “really cool shit.”

Episode 446: Harrison Scott Key and the Plight of Memoir

By Brendan O’Meara

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Harrison Scott Key (@harrisonscottkey) has written three memoirs, and what’s key to them as the narrator is making yourself either the idiot or the villain. In How to Stay Married: The Most Insane Love Story Ever Told (Avid Reader Press) he was, for a time, the victim of his wife’s affair. But in deftly maneuvering and playing with structure he treats his marriage like a crime novel.

Harrison saves some of the biggest punches for himself as and his wife pieced together the wreckage into something lasting.

Harrison is also the author of The World’s Largest Man and Congratulations, Who Are You Again? He’s masterfully funny and handles the balance between jokes and earnestness with a skill few possess.

Episode 445: For Andrew Dubbins, It’s About the Love of the Story

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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, and Dan Zak 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.

By Brendan O’Meara

When Andrew Dubbins locks into a story idea, it’s got to tick (tic?) certain boxes. Above them all is it’s got to have a story engine, it’s got to be cinematic.

And so it is with his story for The Atavist Magazine, “The After Dark Bandit.” This is a wild story about twin brothers who robbed banks at the same time, thus confounding authorities about how, it would appear, one guy was knocking off two banks at the same time.

Andrew is the author of Into Enemy Waters: The Story of the WWII Frogmen Who became the Navy SEALs. He was journalist of the year by the LA Press Club in 2020, and his work has appeared in Men’s Health, Slate, the LA Times, Smithsonian, Alta, and The Daily Beast.

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 444: Stephanie Gorton Embraces the Messiness

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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, and Dan Zak 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.

By Brendan O’Meara

On the tracking of the podcast, I said that Stephanie Gorton hadn’t been on the podcast in 2.5 years. It’s been 4.5 years. But she’s back! This to celebrate The Icon & the Idealist: Margaret Sanger, Mary Ware Dennett, and the Rivalry That Brought Birth Control to America (Ecco).

It’s a tremendous book and one that has received a lot of positive attention in places like The New Yorker, The New York Times, and The Washington Post.

Episode 443: Jared Sullivan and the Subtle Art of the Cold Call

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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, and Dan Zak 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.

https://combeyond.bu.edu/offering/the-power-of-narrative-conference/

https://brendanomeara.com/episode-281-susan-orlean-tackles-ledes-generating-story-ideas-and-on-animals/

By Brendan O’Meara

Jared Sullivan is here. https://jared-sullivan-kisp.squarespace.com/about

He is the author of Valley So Low: One Lawyer’s Fight for Justice in the Wake of America’s Great Coal Catastrophe. It’s published by Knopf.

https://bookshop.org/book/9780593321119

Jared’s book has gotten a prime review in The New York Times and was one of those four featured books in a recent issue of The New Yorker. You know the Briefly Noted section toward the back. It doesn’t matter what issue. What matters is that it was THERE.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/14/books/review/valley-so-low-jared-sullivan.html