#AmWriting – Page 4 – Home of The Creative Nonfiction Podcast

Episode 458: Jaydra Johnson Had to Get Weird

“Part of that essay is my time spent working as a maid when I was young and the fact that my mom had been a maid and my grandma had been a maid, and I hated that job. I hated that job so much, and partly because it felt so demeaning, or that I was demeaned through the job. And because it’s not like I think that housekeeping is not valuable work; obviously it is, but the way I was treated by people in that job was probably the worst of any job I’ve ever had.” — Jaydra Johnson

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

Friday, March 14, 2025

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“I believe in writers. I believe in writing and being able to bring back a story then tell it is fundamental. But what I was fortunate enough to get exposed to very early in my career, and I really believe is now the way to go, which is the nature of editing as thinking, right? And so we all need a thinking partner.” — Neil Brown

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.

Episode 453: Chandlor Henderson, Live at Gratitude Brewing, Says ‘Focus on the Skill’

Friday, Feb. 28, 2025

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There isn’t much Chandlor Henderson (nywele_hendo) doesn’t do. He’s an editor, a writer, a journalist, a filmmaker, a comic book writer, a student at the University of Oregon, a Google Scholar, so it was a great pleasure to speak with him in the first in a series of quarterly live podcasts, this one recorded at Gratitude Brewing in Eugene.

(Allow me the space to thank Jesse Springer for letting me borrow his speakers for this event).

This was a great conversation and what Ruby McConnell and I hope will be a regular thing in Eugene, to turn the city into the same kind of draw that Portland is for many authors coming through the PNW.

I Did It! I Read The New Yorker Cover to Cover! I Am Complete!

One of the sample covers of the anniversary issue of The New Yorker, a brilliant tech-riff on the classic Eustace Tilley, by Kerry James Marshall.

Monday, Feb. 24, 2025

There’s a gag in the brilliant Michael Schur’s philosophy-and-ethics vehicle The Good Place where one of the torture scenarios for the Bad Place was a room where issues of The New Yorker won’t stop delivering. It’s impossible to keep up. Michael (a character on the show played by Ted Danson), a demon, laughs and says something to the effect of, “They just keep coming!”

That’s always the feeling. I barely have time to read the cartoons before the next issue arrives at my door. The hundreds and hundreds of unread New Yorkers that have come through my house is upsetting and dispiriting. I’m wasting the gift subscription my mother-in-law gives me every year. It’s not a cheap subscription.

But with all the hullabaloo surrounding the 100th anniversary of The New Yorker, I put my foot down and said, “THIS is the week I read The New Yorker cover to cover.” And I did!

Episode 452: lamb of god’s Randy Blythe’s Search for Perspective in ‘Just Beyond the Light’

Friday, Feb. 21, 2025

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If Randy Blythe’s first book, Dark Days, was about accountability, his second book, Just Beyond the Light: Making Peace with the Wars Inside Our Head (Grand Central), is about perspective.

In essays ranging from the premature death of a young fan to surfing waves to revering his beloved grandmother, Randy talks about art and music and the messiness of being a creative person.

Is That a Paper-Bag Book Cover? Yes, It Is!

Tuesday, February 18, 2025

I was looking Etsy for a vegan slip cover for my Field Notes journals. I wanted something that would protect a volume should I tuck it in a bag or pocket. I found a good one, and it wasn’t that expensive, but then I thought, why don’t I try to make one?

Then I thought back to middle school and high school and how part of our assignments at the start of the school year was to take a paper bag from that week’s grocery run and make book covers.

Episode 451: When Beach Read Meets a System with Lindsay Jill Roth

Friday, Feb. 14, 2025

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When Lindsay Jill Roth (@lindsayjillroth) described her latest book as beach read meets system, that was pretty spot-on. There’s a breezy, conversational tone to Romances & Practicalities: A Love Story (Maybe Yours?) in 250 Questions (William Morrow). It weaves the research and interviews Lindsay did along with her personal story of finding her partner.

Lindsay is an award-winning television producer and writer, with novel under her belt as well, What Pretty Girls Are Made Of (Simon & Schuster). She has worked events like The Grammys, The TONYs, and The Masters.

Episode 450: Ahead of Super Bowl LIX, John Eisenberg Chronicles the Long Journey of the Black Quarterback

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John Eisenberg knew he wanted to write books from a very young age. He has written eleven … his latest being Rocket Men: The Black Quarterbacks Who Revolutionized Pro Football (Basic Books).

It’s an amazing history that tackles (pardon the football pun) the institutionalized/structural racism of the NFL from the perspective of the quarterback position.¹

There was a time when Black men were thought mentally incapable of handling the position, but they were encouraged to change positions to less intellectually demanding positions. Yeah.