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Episode 162: Seyward Darby — Editing as Collaboration at The Atavist

“Let me be your sounding board for how the piece should come together.” — Seyward Darby (@seywarddarby)

“Writing reminds you what it’s like to stare at a blank page and how hard it is to create a first draft,” Seyward Darby said on Episode 162 of the podcast.

She’s the executive editor of The Atavist Magazine, an online jam that produces one longform feature a month. It’s awesome. It’s on my bucket list as a place to have work published.

So many great nuggets in this episode specifically about pitching/querying. It’s another master class in what she finds strong. See episodes with Evan Ratliff and Ian Frisch. You gotta have a good fastball, baby.

Subscribe to the show wherever you get your pods. Spot. App. Goog. Stitch. We like one syllable.

Keep the conversation going on Twitter @CNFPod. Instagram is @cnfpod and Facebook is @CNFPodcast or The Creative Nonfiction Podcast. Go jump in. It’s fun. The water’s refreshing.

Share this with a fellow CNFer and link up to it on your preferred social network.

Enjoy the show!

Episode 161: Mark Kram Jr.—Letting the Dust Clear, Being a Late Bloomer, and Smokin’ Joe

“This is not something that comes overnight. It’s a long, arduous road,” says Mark Kram Jr.

Mark Kram Jr., author of Smokin’ Joe: The Life of Joe Frazier, joined me for a great conversation about his early career and the struggles he overcame.

He learned on the job, more or less. He said he was a late bloomer (Something I can attest to. Still waitin’ on my bloom.)

He also wrote Like Any Normal Day, and edited a book of his father’s best writing Great Men Die Twice.

Mark has won the PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing and has been anthologized The Best American Sports Writing six times.

As always, if you dig the show, please share this across your social networks. Tag the show @CNFPod on Twitter and I’ll jump in the fire with you. You can subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts.

Episode 160: Chuck Klosterman — ‘Raised in Captivity,’ Being Straightforward, and How Nonfiction is Closer to Bowling

Chuck Klosterman. Photo credit Jason Booher

“I think that very often when anybody is writing a book, they lose track of the fact that the book can be whatever you want.” —Chuck Klosterman

“Nonfiction is closer to bowling. It can be perfect.” —Chuck Klosterman

Hey, CNFers, look who came over to CNF Pod HQ! It’s Chuck Klosterman, one my favorite authors for how he’s able to turn a phrase, dollop profanity, and be the mind I wish I had.

Chuck’s latest book is Raised in Captivity: Fictional Nonfiction, and we take a dive into what makes this collection of short stories — his first collection of short stories of his eleven books.

Keep the conversation going on Twitter @CNFPod. Let me know what you think. Tweet out what you love. I’ll tweet back horns and skulls.

I hope you have as much fun listening to this as I did conducting the interview and later editing it for production.

Episode 159: Allie Rowbottom—The Page as Safe Place

By Brendan O’Meara

“Talent is not enough. You have to have luck. You have to have drive.” —Allie Rowbottom (@allierowbottom)

In this 159th episode of CNF, I welcome Allie Rowbottom, author of Jell-O Girls: A Family History.

We had a nice time talking about journaling, competition, jealousy, and finding the page as a safe place.

As always, keep the conversation going on Twitter @CNFPod and let me know what you thought of this episode. Share it across your social media profiles and me sure to tag the show so I can jump in the fire with you.

If you’re feeling kind, take a less than five minutes and leave a kind review or rating on Apple Podcasts. With your help, we can reach 100 of them.

Enjoy the show!

Episode 158: Naomi Gordon-Loebl—F*ck, Yeah! Essays

“There’s always gonna be people who are better than you, and there’s also people who’re gonna be worse than you, but that can’t be the reason you write or don’t write.” — Naomi Gordon-Loebl (@naomigloebl)

Hey, CNFers, welcome to this installment featuring Naomi Gordon-Loebl, an essayist and journalist whose work has appeared in The New York Times, Hazlitt, and more.

She grew up in a communal household in Brooklyn, has a twin sister, won the parent lottery, and is finding her footing as a writer passionate about LGBT issues, but it was her NYT essay on getting the “yips” that made me reach out.

Keep the conversation going on Twitter @CNFPod and Instagram @cnfpod. And consider leaving a kind review on Apple Podcasts.

Thanks be to Goucher College’s MFA in Nonfiction and Bay Path University’s MFA in Creative Nonfiction for supporting this show.

Episode 157: Eric Ducker—’I Want This Weirder’

Want the transcript of Eric’s episode? PayPal $5 to brendan at brendanomeara dot com and I’ll send you the pdf!

“I want to hear more of you in this. I want this weirder. Let loose.” —Eric Ducker (@ericducker)

By Brendan O’Meara

Hey, CNFers! So Eric Ducker is here. He’s a freelance editor and writer. When he wrote this great piece on Jenny Odell, I reached out to him.

We talk about how important music is to him and the shape of his weeks when he’s pitching vs. when he’s writing. Be sure to check out his work at his Contently site.

Subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts. Consider leaving a kind review on Apple Podcasts. If you do, I’ll coach up a piece of your writing up to 2,000 words. Leave a review, wait for it to publish, take a screenshot, send it to me, then I’ll reach back out!

Keep the conversation going on Twitter @CNFPod and Instagram @cnfpod. Facebook is @CNFPodcast. What fun!

Episode 156: Sonya Huber—Creative Infidelities

Want the transcript to this episode?! PayPal brendan at brendan omeara dot com $5 and I’ll send you the PDF!

By Brendan O’Meara

“I think that’s why people stop writing: the not knowing what you’re doing feels so terrible.” —Sonya Huber (@sonyahuber)

Hey…hey, you, how are you?

Sonya Huber is here. She’s the author of these five books:

Pain Woman Takes Your Keys and Other Essays from a Nervous System
Opa Nobody
Cover Me: A Health Insurance Memoir
The “Backwards” Research Guide for Writers
The Evolution of Hillary Rodham Clinton

Be sure to subscribe to the show wherever you get our podcasts. If you leave a review of the show, I’ll coach up a piece of your writing of up to 2,000 words. Write the review, take a screenshot when it posts, email me the screenshot, and I’ll reach back out and get going.

Keep the conversation going on Twitter @CNFPod or Facebook or Instagram.

Episode 155: T.D. Thornton—Horses, Cons, Boxers, Oh, My!

“You can persevere and you can grind, but you have to get lucky at times.” —T.D. Thornton (@thorntontd on Twitter)

“You have to churn out some bad writing to get to good or excellent writing.” —T.D. Thornton

By Brendan O’Meara

T.D. Thornton is a journalist and author.

He wrote Not By a Long Shot: A Season at a Hard-Luck Horse Track and My Adventures with Your Money: George Graham Rice and the Golden Age of the Con Artist.

Consider buying one, or both.

This was a fun conversation and I hope you dig it, and I hope you share it across your networks. Maybe encourage your pals to subscribe.

Join me on Twitter @CNFPod and Instagram @cnfpod to keep the conversation going.

Episode 154: Julian Smith—Pitch Clubs, Falling in Love with the Work, and Aloha Rodeo

By Brendan O’Meara

“The more you can immerse yourself in a story the better you can write about it.” —Julian Smith (@julianwrites)

“You gotta fall in love with your subject and sometimes people have to pull you out.” —Julian Smith (juliansmith.com)

Julian Smith is a freelance journalist covering science, conservation, and adventure for publications like Smithsonian, Wired, Outside, Men’s Journal, National Geographic Traveler, and The Washington Post.

He co-authored Aloha Rodeo with David Wolman, a fellow journalist he worked with before on this Epic Magazine piece about two warring ice cream trucks. It’s…epic.

Julian is also the author of Crossing the Heart of Africa and Smokejumper.

Episode 153: Amanda Petrusich—Clinging to Tiny Victories, Letting the Process Sustain You, and Wet Jeans

Amanda Petrusich is on the main stage for Episode 153.

By Brendan O’Meara

“The work itself, the process has to sustain you.” —Amanda Petrusich (@amandapetrusich Twitter)

“It’s like wet jeans, that’s the feeling of generating a bunch of crappy writing.”—Amanda Petrusich (@amandapetrusich IG)

Amanda Petrusich, staff writer for The New Yorker, joined me for a spirited conversation about her approach to writing criticism and the grind she endured to get where she’s at.

It was this great piece she wrote on Metallica that made me want to reach out to her. The way to this man’s heart is through Metallica.

Be sure to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts and wherever else you get your podcasts. Keep the conversation going on Twitter @BrendanOMeara and @CNFPod. Instagram: @cnfpod. Facebook The Creative Nonfiction Podcast.

Books by Amanda

Don’t Sell at Any Price
It Still Moves
Pink Moon

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MONTHLY NEWSLETTER!: Once a Month. No Spam. Can’t Beat It.

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MONTHLY NEWSLETTER!: Once a Month. No Spam. Can’t Beat It.

MONTHLY NEWSLETTER!: Once a Month. No Spam. Can’t Beat It.

Books by Amanda

MONTHLY NEWSLETTER!: Once a Month. No Spam. Can’t Beat It.