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“It’s like trying on clothes when you’re a young writer, early in your career, you’re constantly trying to figure out who you are.” — Hampton Sides, Ep. 473
Continue reading “Episode 473: Finding the Frame with Hampton Sides”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.
Continue reading “Episode 444: Stephanie Gorton Embraces the Messiness”
By Brendan O’Meara
Betsy Golden Kellem (@bgkellem) is an attorney, a historian, and a “scholar of the unusual.”
Her piece, “City on Fire,” chronicles “the night violent anti-government conspirators sowed chaos in the heart of Manhattan” … in 1864. It’s a wild piece that shows how history has a way of feeling very fresh.
Continue reading “Episode 432: Betsy Golden Kellem, Scholar of the Unusual, Closet Historian, Atavist Writer”
My first rough draft is my outline. That’s what I’m learning about myself. My first drafts are very rough. It’s literally a dump from my head of what I want to say how I want to say it, how I think it should be structured.
Tyler Hooper, Ep. 368
Hi there, CNFers, we’ve got Tyler Hooper (@thooper8) in the house to talk about his piece “The Titanic of the Pacific” for The Atavist Magazine.
Tyler cites the great Erik Larson as an influence and you can feel the pulse of that throughout this nautical-disaster piece about the sinking and tragedy surrounding The Valencia. Tyler writes a bit of the backstory at his Medium page here.
Tyler is a writer, podcaster, and storyteller living on Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Canada. He has a master’s degree in history and has worked as a journalist.
In this episode we talk about :
Continue reading “Episode 368: Tyler Hooper”
You know this, CNFers, always nice when we can welcome a guest back. So here’s Kristina R. Gaddy, back with her new book Well of Souls: Uncovering the Banjo’s Hidden History (Norton).
We talk about the late Philip Gerard, what she learned from Book 1 to Book 2, structure, and why do we even write books?
You could say I’m souring on writing books but like everything in my life I’m sure it’ll pass and I’ll be back to saying writing books is the ONLY thing that matters.
Continue reading “Episode 343: Kristina R. Gaddy”
By Brendan O’Meara
Hey CNFers, welcome to CNF Pod, the creative nonfiction podcast, the show where I usually speak to badass people about the art and craft of telling true stories. I say usually because this week I don’t have a guest.
Booooo…
Hey, hey, hey before you start hurling tomatoes up that the stage, hear me out. My guest this week wasn’t feeling good so we had to reschedule. You might be like, “BO, thought you had some of these in the can. Get your house in order.” And yes, in an ideal world I have a few in the can, but you’d be surprised how many of these interviews are done the week of and packaged soon thereafter.
I could’ve scrambled for a guest but I wanted to try something new. I don’t think this’ll be a regular thing in the podcast feed. I DO think it’ll be a normal thing for the Patreon crew so consider heading to patreon.com/cnfpod to support the podcast to get special podcasts like this one you’re about to hear.
So what’s the deal? In an effort to up the production value and to make the show seem a little bit more zippy, I’ve always been inspired by the structure of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. Here are these episodes that focus on one guest, they film all day, so hours and hours of footage, for what, 15 minutes of final product? What must that edit be like?
Continue reading “Episode 308: The Year the Mountain of Manure Was Hit by a Flood”
Glenn Stout returns for his fifth time to the podcast, this time to talk about his thrilling new book The Tiger Girl and the Candy Kid: America’s First Gangster Couple.
The book takes us to the 1920s, a time when wars were supposed to be a thing of the past, a pandemic wiped across the globe, and veterans coming from the Great War had little support at home. I’m glad all those things are a relic of the 20th century.
Continue reading “Episode 251: Glenn Stout Brings to Life The Tiger Girl and the Candy Kid: America’s First Gangster Couple”
Catherine Grace Katz, author of The Daughters of Yalta: The Churchills, Roosevelts, and Harrimans: A Story of Love and War, joins me to talk about her new book.
You can find her @Catherine_Katz on Twitter.
Catherine graduated from Harvard with a BA in history in 2013. She earned an MPhil in modern European history from Christ’s College at the University of Cambridge in 2014, and now is pursuing her JD at Harvard Law School.
You could say she was punching down in class coming by to speak with me.
She joins the ranks of several historians who have been on the show like Laura Hillenbrand, Bob Batchelor, and James Carl Nelson, to name a few.
We talk about her upbringing in Chicago and how stories were such an early part of her life, her dissertation on modern counterintelligence, research, and her Bookshelf for the Apocalypse. All great stuff.
Keep the conversation going on social media @CNFPod across the Big Three and consider leaving the show a kind review on Apple Podcasts. Drop me a line if you have questions, want me to work with you on your book or essay, or you just want to say hello.
A Gentleman in Moscow
Emma
Anne Green Gables
The Martian
To Kill a Mockingbird
In Command of History
Brendan does not get a kickback for any book sales via affiliate links. This is why he fails.
This episode is sponsored by Scrivener, by writers for writers.
“But there was a sense that I had let down my younger self and ought to find a way to make writing at least in some way, a part of my part life.” — Stephanie Gorton.
Stephanie Gorton (@sdgortonwords) is the author of Citizen Reporters: S.S. McClure, Ida Tarbell, and the Magazine that Rewrote America. It’s a ripping-good yarn.
In this conversation we talk about her Page Turner piece for New Yorker dot com about an H.P. Lovecraft conference in Providence, her home city. We riff on what it was like for her to go from publishing to writing. We talk about the social media and why anyone with platform would trust a journalist with their stories. It’s good, clean fun.
Keep the conversation going on social media by linking up the show and tagging it @CNFPod.
This podcast was sponsored in part by Scrivener, made by writers for writers! It’s also sponsored by Casualty of Words, a writing podcast for people in a hurry.
Be sure you’re subscribed to the podcast wherever you get your podcasts and subscribe to my monthly newsletter for book recommendations, writing tips, and what you might’ve missed from the world of the podcast. You’re also entered to win books. What’s not to like?! Sign up below.
“These guys were screaming at me from beyond the grave.” —Bob Batchelor (@CultPopCulture)
“I worked to write the longest screenplay possible.” —Bob Batchelor
By Brendan O’Meara
Here we are again, CNFers! What’s new?
We’ve got Bob Batchelor here talking about The Bourbon King: The Life and Crimes of George Remus, Prohibition’s Evil Genius (Diversion Books)
Crazy story, a story that partly inspired The Great Gatsby, perhaps, maybe.
I hope you check it out.
We dig into lots of great things: How John Updike showed Bob the way, singing a kind of Pennsylvania song, and dealing with a real rotten teacher who made Bob’s life miserable until he got out from under her and made something of himself with mentors who saw his potential in college. It’s a great story.
Keep the conversation going on Twitter @CNFPod. And, if you’re feeling kind, leave a review on Apple Podcasts. I hope I’ve made something worth sharing, so please share it with your own network.