memoir – Page 8 – Home of The Creative Nonfiction Podcast

Episode 302: Neda Toloui-Semnani

If you’re like me, you like a memoir where the author is hunting for something. Neda Toloui-Semnani is on a quest of sorts in They Said They Wanted Revolution: A Memoir of My Parents (Little a, 2022).

Neda’s father was an Iranian revolutionary who was executed in the early 1980s by the shah’s regime. Neda was a toddler at the time. Neda’s mother and father were part of the protests in Berkley, California and mobilized for change.

While in Iran in the early 80s, Neda recounts the harrowing story of how she and her family escaped Iran after her father was arrested. This book is nuanced and layered and a wonderful read.

Episode 300: Gloria Liu

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By Brendan O’Meara

Gloria Liu (@thats_my_line) is a freelance writer/journalist based out of Colorado.

She’s a former features editor for Outside Magazine, and it was a reported essay she wrote for outside about burnout and the meaning of life that prompted this conversation. Can’t find a link to that story, but her piece on garages is awesome, as is this piece on money, as well as the housing crisis in a ski town.

We chat about her journey in freelancing. She’s on her second rodeo with freelancing, after a stint as features editor for Outside. Her background is in finance and business, so we dig into some lessons she learned from that that help her in freelancing.

Episode 299: Christine Grimaldi and “The Shadow and the Ghost”

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By Brendan O’Meara

Christine Grimaldi (@chgrimaldi) is here to talk about her piece for The Atavist Magazine called “The Shadow and the Ghost.“

It blends memoir and journalism into a gripping tale of grifters and when secrets become an inheritance.

We talk about about her story, her love being edited, and being a “sentence thief.”

We also hear from lead editor and editor-in-chief Seyward Darby about the experience of editing this piece, as well as other themes that cropped regarding Christine’s piece.

Episode 297: Sonia Weiser is Looking for a Hobby

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By Brendan O’Meara

Sonia Weiser (@weischoice) is a freelance writer and the founder of the Opportunities of the Week newsletter.

This was a fun conversation, a little different than your classic CNF Pod, but fun.

Sonia writes all kinds of stuff, but admits she hasn’t quite had the bandwidth to pursue much writing these days.

A few years ago, she wrote a great essay about playing online Scrabble with her mom, charged with all those mother-daughter feels.

We talk about hobbies, writing fiction, goals, the new year, fun stuff!

Episode 296: Bradford Pearson on Reporting, Ambition, and ‘The Eagles of Heart Mountain’

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By Brendan O’Meara

Who’s on the show this week, Hank?

Bradford Pearson (@bradfordpearson) on Twitter and IG, is the author of The Eagles of Heart Mountain. Must be a story of a gritty football team, right? Well, sorta, the subtitle is a true story of football, incarceration, and resistance in World War II America.

OK, that still might not get at the 100% heart of the tragedy of this book. It’s about the incarceration of Japanese Americans from 1942 to 1945, whereupon thousands upon thousands, many of which were naturalized American citizens, were stripped from their homes largely on the west coast and moved inland to often inhospitable lands, namely heart mountain in northwest Wyoming living in horrible conditions and subject to impossible racism and prejudice.

For us football fans out there, we know that watching the grid iron on a Saturday or a Sunday provides some relief and distraction, so too did the Eagles of Heart Mountain.

Episode 294: ‘We Wish to be Able to Sing’, Mike Damiano Talks About His Atavist Story

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By Brendan O’Meara

Mike Damiano brings 2021 to a close with his piece for the Atavist Magazine about an unlikely revolutionary who helped the people of Easter Island earn rights they deserved from an oppressive Chilean naval regime. It’s the story of Alfonso Rapu a school teacher turned revolutionary via nonviolence. It’s called “We Wish to Be Able to Sing.”

Mike is a staff writer for Boston Magazine, but like many people writing stories for the Atavist, he’d been working on this Easter Island story for years. Atavist becomes like this benevolent foster home for stories that are too long for traditional magazines and too short to be books. And Seyward and Jonah say, come here little story, we’re gonna make you a STAR!

The show has a new Instagram handle, @creativenonfictionpodcast, and you can always keep the conversation going on Twitter @CNFPod.

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, 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. I just paid out the writers from the last audio magazine. 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.

Episode 293: The ‘Supremely Tiny Acts’ of Sonya Huber

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By Brendan O’Meara

Look who’s back? It’s Sonya Huber!

What a treat!

She the author of the memoir Supremely Tiny Acts: A Memoir of a Day (Mad Creek Books) and it’s one of the best experiences I had reading a book in 2021.

In this episode we talk about:

Episode 292: Chip Scanlan says, ‘A Writer is Someone Who Writes. Period.’

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By Brendan O’Meara

Hey, CNFers, Chip Scanlan is here!

Here’s a little ditty from his website:

I am a writer. An author. A writing coach who has helped thousands of writers discover the writer within us all.

And his new book Writers on Writing: Inside the Lives of 55 Distinguished Writers and Editors is out now. And for $10 on Kindle ($15 for paperback) you get insights from the likes of Susan Orlean, Bronwen Dickey, Tommy Tomlinson, David Finkel, Roy Peter Clark, Rosalind Bentley, and many, many more.

In the book, Chip (@chipscanlan) asks four questions of every person:

Episode 289: The Atavist’s ‘Feast for Lost Souls’ with Annelise Jolley and Zahara Gomez

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By Brendan O’Meara

Annelise Jolley and Zahara Gomez teamed up to create “A Feast for Lost Souls” for this month’s piece for The Atavist Magazine.

What an incredible story about a group of women who hunt for the bodies of their “disappeared” loved ones, but find ways to honor them through cooking. The Memory Recipe Book is what Zahara helped develop, along with the widows and mothers, to pay tribute to their lost sons and husbands.

Zahara also created a few mini-documentaries as part of this story to go along with Annelise’s incredible reporting and writing of the piece.

Audio Magazine Issue 2: Summer

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By Brendan O’Meara

After much deliberation and deep thoughts (haha), I’m taking the audio magazine 100% public.

Why?

Well, it comes down to reach. Writers want to be read (in this case heard). The Patreon audience is going to be significantly smaller than the public feed for the podcast.

Issue 1 was downloaded about 800 times. Issue 2 went out to about 15, 16 people, since it was Patreon-only.

I polled the Patreon audience because I didn’t want to violate their trust and what they signed up for. 100% of them said to take it to the largest possible audience.

They will get other goodies and perks as a result.

That’s a conversation for another time.

So, for now, enjoy original work from Jake Gronsky, whose essay deals with the end of his minor league baseball career, Krystina Wales, whose day at the beach reveals more than she bargained for, Carrie Hagen, whose found a savior in the unlikeliest of places, and Matthew Denis, who takes us to a special place of his childhood summers. Add to that three original poems from Jorah LaFleur, and you have you a summer-themed issue bound to warm you up.

Hope you brought your sunscreen!

The Patreon audience makes it possible to pay writers for their work, so please consider becoming a member and all that comes with it. Lots of bang-for-buck, IMO!

Brendan’s Monthly Newsletter: First of the month! No spam! Can’t beat it!

Brendan’s Monthly Newsletter: First of the month! No spam! Can’t beat it!