I’m no dad, nor will I ever be one, but I’m a son, and I’d read about bricklaying if Tim O’Brien’s name is attached to it. This book is so expansive and tender and prescriptive without being didactic. It’s about reading, writing, fatherhood, sonhood, marriage, struggle, triumph, demons. It’s about Tim.
Remember, if you enjoy the show, consider linking up to it on social media and leaving a kind review over on Apple Podcasts.
And also be sure to sign up for my monthly newsletter. I’ve scaled back social media (@CNFPod across the Big Three), but the newsletter is the real thing, the real one-to-one connection I’m after.
In any case, Steven and I randomly met in November 2018 in line at a talk during the Portland Book Festival. We were in line to hear Elizabeth Rush give a talk. He heard my voice from this thing and here we are.
You see? You never know where your next podcast guest might come from.
Be sure to subscribe to the show and keep the conversation going on Twitter @CNFPod or @BrendanOMeara. I love to hear what resonates with you, so please reach out and certainly share across your networks.
This is a nice, tight thirty-minute interview. If you want a little more background on Sonja, check out Episode 56. It’s that special kind of memoir that has some journalistic components, something you might find in books by Leslie Jamison or Meredith May.
We dig into what brought Sonja to this story and how she rediscovered a long dormant devotion to Catholicism. The book doesn’t read like some icky treatise on becoming born again. It’s not evangelical in the least. It’s a person on a journey, a literal and figurative journey. And in the hands of a writer like Sonja,
I can’t recommend it enough. Do yourself and a friend a favor and buy this book. You might want to listen and subscribe to his great podcast too, Chase Jarvis Live Show. He’s been doing this for ten+ years. Amazing stuff.
He made his bones as a photographer and might be most known for (these days) for founding Creative Live, the great online learning platform. I’ve purchased several classes that have helped me immensely.
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You’re going to love how Chase went about writing this book as we break open the pinata of what makes this book — and Chase — so special.
“Every piece of writing is going to be hard in some way, and you just have to know that, and sit with it and keep going forward, and you will have a breakthrough at some point if you don’t give up.” —Kate Hopper
By Brendan O’Meara
Hey, there, CNFers, Kate Hopper (@MNKateHopper) joins me to talk about her True Story essay “Stumbling into Joy.” In case you couldn’t tell from the title of this episode, she learns to play the bass guitar in her forties. It’s pretty rad.
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We had a nice time talking about journaling, competition, jealousy, and finding the page as a safe place.
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How are you, CNFers? I’m Brendan O’Meara and this is The Creative Nonfiction Podcast, the show where I speak to badass writers, filmmakers, producers, and podcasters about the art and craft of telling true stories, chart their journey through this crazy world and offer a few tips along the way to help you get the work done.
Be sure to subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts and follow me and the show on Twitter @BrendanOMeara and @cnfpod. You can follow the show on Instagram too where I post some great quote cards and audiograms from the show’s deep bench.
If you’re feeling friendly, please leave a review or a rating on iTunes. I’d love to see it reach 100, but it’ll take you. It’ll take you going that extra mile for you buddy BO. You know I love you for it.
Okay, so Meredith May is here to talk about her career and her new book. She was shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize for a long feature she wrote back around the time of the second Iraq War for the San Francisco Chronicle. We talk about the toxic nature of the competition Olympics, and how writing about someone else in another book cracked open her memoir for her.
Leanna James Blackwell wrote an essay. It’s good. Real good.
By Brendan O’Meara
Tweetables by Leanna James Blackwell (@baypathmfaCNF)
“Don’t worry if you go through a fallow period. It doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with you.”
“When that idea comes, don’t wait, grab it, run.”
Okay, this is The Creative Nonfiction Podcast, the show where I talk to badass writers (like Laura Hillenbrand), filmmakers (like Emer Reynolds), and producers (like Alexandra DiPalma) about the art and craft of telling true stories, how they became who they are, and the habits and routines that make them special, so maybe you can apply those tools of mastery to your own work.
Harrison Scott Key came back to the show to talk about his amazing work. Since that day way back in 2013, Harrison has published his first memoir The World’s Largest Man about his father, which also won the Thurber Prize for the funniest book in the country. And his latest book, Congratulations, Who Are You Again?, Was my single favorite book from 2018.
This one was so funny, inspiring, and entertaining that I took it with me on walks and when I found a crack in my schedule I’d pick this thing up and read a few pages if I could while my boss wasn’t looking.
But we’ll get to that. I guess I forgot to mention that this is The Creative Nonfiction Podcast, the show where I speak to badass writers, filmmakers, and producers about the art and craft of telling true stories. I also unpack their origins and how they approach the work in the face of day jobs and crippling self-doubt. Am I projecting. Perhaps.
Do you subscribe this here podcast? You can find it just about anywhere and if you dig this show and others, link up to it on your social media platforms. You are the social network, CNFers. Rage Against the Algorithm. And if you have a minute or two, please give the show a rating over on Apple Podcasts. Follow the show @CNFPod on Twitter and @BrendanOMeara on Twitter.
What else, oh, yes, subscribe to my monthly newsletter. It’s chock full of my reading recommendations and what you might have missed from the world of the podcast. Once a month. No spam. Can’t beat it.
So Harrison came back to the show and as always I try and cut down these interviews by about 10-15% and I simply couldn’t do that with this one. Couldn’t do it, so I hope you enjoy the big man himself, Harrison Scott Key.
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