memoir – Page 4 – Home of The Creative Nonfiction Podcast

Episode 412: Leaving the Emotional Moments Unsaid with Lilly Dancyger

As you know, we love repeat guests on the show, and Lilly Dancyger (@lillydancyger) fit the bill with her new book First Love: Essays on Friendship (Dial Press). This is right up there for a CNFy award, my non-existent gala for the best I’ve experienced in creative nonfiction. Maybe the perfect Galentine’s Day gift.

Lilly’s collection, at least to me, doesn’t feel essay-ish. It’s prismatic, but it feels united, these essays about her girlfriends dating all the way back to her first best friend, her first love, her cousin Sabina.

Lilly also is the author of Negative Space and the editor of Burn it Down. She’s the nonfiction acquisitions editor for Barrelhouse Books and a teacher at Columbia University School of Arts. She also does freelance editor, mainly in the memoir/essay realm.

Episode 411: The Heart Part and Big Dreams with Isa Adney

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By Brendan O’Meara

Pretty rad guest here in Isa Adney (@isaadney). She has been a long-time listener of the show and wouldn’t you know she released a killer little book called The Little Book of Big Dreams: True Stories About People Who Followed a Spark (She Writes Press).

The book is a series of thematic profiles about courageous creators who followed their dreams. Isa interviewed more than 100 people for the book, but only a couple dozen made the cut. The book was a nine-year journey for her and a dream come true in and of itself.

Isa is a writer and documentary producer and is a person who takes agency in her creative work, profiling people for her blog as a means to show she has the chops. As Seth Godin says, if you want to be a marketer, do marketing.

Episode 408: North to Trees, South to Gold with Ruby McConnell

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By Brendan O’Meara

Well, isn’t a treat to hear from Ruby McConnell again? She’ got a new book out, this spring of 2024, Wilderness and the American Spirit (Overcup Books). It’s a book steeped in Oregon lore, but in that Oregonian-ness lies the universal of what the United States has inflicted upon the land, its Native peoples, and how the Applegate Road is the thread that connects seemingly disparate topics.

Ruby, @rubygonewild, also is the author of Ground Truth and A Woman’s Guide to the Wild. Ruby is one of the good ones, dude.

She’s a working writer with multiple projects going, small presses, big presses, freelance, teaching, organizing. She’s a buoyant spirit and always a treasure to have on these here airwaves.

Episode 404: Hanif Abdurraqib’s Nod to Witnessing in ‘There’s Always This Year’

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By Brendan O’Meara

Kinda crazy, right? That someone like Hanif Abdurraqib (@nifmuhammad) would agree to be on this little podcast, which just turned eleven on March 20.

Hanif needs next-to-no introduction, but here’s a little bit about him. His book A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance was a finalist for the National Book Award. He’s the author of the essay collection They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us and the poetry collections A Fortune for Your Disaster and The Crown Ain’t Worth Much. His latest book is There’s Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension (Random House).

It’s a masterpiece; Hanif is a masterpiece.

In this conversation, we talk about productivity, envy, specificity, intentionality, and a nod to witnessing. It’s great stuff, great talk.

Episode 403: Elizabeth Rush Moves Toward Exactitude

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By Brendan O’Meara

Elizabeth Rush returns, friend. This is her third trip to the show, this time to celebrate The Quickening: Creation and Community at the Ends of the Earth (Milkweed).

Liz also is the author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore (Milkweed). Both are wonderful books.

The Quickening deals with climate change and motherhood and shines light on the lesser celebrated laborers that make treks to the Antarctic possible. Oh, yes, she was the writer in residence aboard a giant boat that went to the Thwaites Glacier.

Episode 402: The Stentorian-Voiced Dudely Bro-ness of Rob Harvilla

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For a couple weeks, visit combeyond.bu.edu, use the promo code NARRATIVE25 at checkout and get 25% your tuition for the two-day Power of Narrative Conference. And, no, I don’t get any dough.

By Brendan O’Meara

Rob Harvilla (@robharvilla) returns to talk about the end of his world famous podcast 60 Songs that Explain the 90s and the book based on the same name.

In this conversation we talk about several of his episodes that made an impression on me, namely the “Sabotage,” “It’s Good to be King,” “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” and “Enter Sandman.” We talk about a lot of things that his podcast has meant to him since he conceived of it in 2020, that year we still haven’t seemed to leave yet.

Episode 400: Richard Blanco on Fever Writing and Finding the Poem within the Poem

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By Brendan O’Meara

For Episode 400, we wanted to go big, presidential-inaugural-poet big. Richard Blanco, @poetrichardblanco on IG, author of the collection Homeland of My Body (Beacon Press), graced out airwaves for a milestone episode.

Great talk about the messiness of writing a book, showing early drafts to students to let them see what a bloody mess the process is, and Richard reads two poems from HOMB.

The list of Richard’s accolades are bonkers-crazy. In 2023, he was won the National Humanities Award and he was named the first ever poet laureate in Miami-Dade County. He’s the author of two memoirs, The Prince of Los Cocuyos and For All of Us, One Today: An Inaugural Poet’s Journey.

The show’s Instagram and Threads handle is @creativenonfictionpodcast.

And you know I’d rather you sign up for my Up-to-11 Newsletter. Signup form is below you and to your right. Book recs, book raffles, cool stuff curated by me for you, fun and entertaining. First of the month. No spam. Can’t beat it.

Consider supporting the show via Patreon patreon.com/cnfpod. Shop around if you want to support the community. The show is free but it ain’t cheap.

Free ways to support the show?

Subscribe and download and share across your socials. And don’t forget to consider leaving a kind review on Apple Podcasts. Those go a LONG way.

Episode 398: Emily Sohn Explores the Complicated Legacy of Virginia Kraft

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By Brendan O’Meara

Emily Sohn (@tidepoolsink) is a freelance journalist based out of Minnesota. For Long Lead, she wrote “The Catch,” an in-depth feature about Virginia Kraft, a trailblazing and complicated woman who was one of the first female writers at Sports Illustrated.

It’s a gripping piece that delves into the ruthlessly ambitious life of Kraft, while weaving in present-day introspection from Emily.

We talk about how she arrived at the story, how she got her head around the research, and the dark night of the soul that always accompanies long work.

Emily’s work has appeared in Long Lead, National Geographic, the Washington Post, Outside, and the New York Times, among others.

Now in Paperback: Matt Bell Refuses to be Done, Dammit

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By Brendan O’Meara

Matt Bell (@mdbell79) is here. Why? He’s got a great craft book out called Refuse to be Done: How to Write and Rewrite a Novel in Three Drafts.

What a great handbook to walk you through the generative pages and then the arduous task — the REAL work — of refining, rewriting, and revising.

This book will teach you patience.

This book will teach you perserverance.

This book will teach you the meaning of work.

Now in Paperback: Susan Orlean on Writing for an Audience and the Entrepreneurial Nature of a Writing Career

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This episode originally aired on August 11, 2017 as Episode 61

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These “now in paperbacks” are a nice reprieve for me work-wise and time-wise, and it’s nice to scroll through my Pocket Casts apps and go, “Oh, that’d be a snazzy one!”

And so we’re here with Susan Orlean’s first rodeo at CNF Pod HQ. Great stuff, like:

always having an audience in mind
having supreme focus
and needing to see yourself as a business person if you plan on doing this type of work

Naturally, a lot more stuff to gnaw on. There was no book to promote, so this is really a writing and craft-centered pod. Future pods dig into her recent work, being The Library Book and On Animals as of this date, Nov. 24, 2023.

The show’s Instagram handle, @creativenonfictionpodcast, and you can always keep the conversation going on Twitter @CNFPod. Or not … you know what’s better? Keep reading …

And you know I’d rather you sign up for my Up-to-11 Newsletter. Here’s the latest. Signup form is below you and to your right. Book recs, book raffles, cool stuff curated by me for you, CNFin’ happy hour or writing group, writing prompts, fun and entertaining. First of the month. No spam. Can’t beat it.

Consider supporting the show via Patreon patreon.com/cnfpod. Shop around if you want to support the community. You make that possible. The show is free but it ain’t cheap.

Free ways to support the show?

Subscribe and download and share across your socials. And don’t forget to consider leaving a kind review on Apple Podcasts. Those go a LONG way.