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Episode 298: Rachel Krantz is ‘Open’

Sponsor love: West Virginia Wesleyan College’s MFA in Creative Writing

Did you hear the news? Rachel Krantz (@RachelKrantz) is here to talk about her new book Open: An Uncensored Memoir of Love, Liberation, and Non-Monogamy (Harmony, 2022).

In this episode we talk about how she turned her reporter’s eye on herself. She had journal entries and recorded conversations with the key characters in this book.

The story chronicles her journey into the world of polyamory (she’s still non-monogamous). But what ensued was a toxic relationship that became manipulative and gaslit. Through it all, Rachel tells a riveting and gutting story.

Rachel also is a fellow plant-based eater, so we talk a little bit about our favorite vegan mac and cheese recipes.

If you care to share, please link up to the show on social media.

A little more about Rachel: Her work has appeared on Vox, the Guardian, the Huffington Post, NPR, the Daily Beast, Vice, and USA Today, just to name a few.

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 297: Sonia Weiser is Looking for a Hobby

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Sponsor love: West Virginia Wesleyan College’s MFA in Creative Writing

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’

Sponsor love: West Virginia Wesleyan College’s MFA in Creative Writing

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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 295: Wil Haygood Talks ‘Colorization,’ Black Films in a White World, and Meeting James Baldwin

Sponsor love: West Virginia Wesleyan College’s MFA in Creative Writing

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By Brendan O’Meara

Wil Haygood is here. I’m going to repeat that: Wil Haygood is here.

He’s here to talk about his latest book, Colorization: 100 Years of Black Films in a White World (Knopf, 2021).

This conversation I did as part of Goucher College’s MFA in Creative Nonfiction. It was a live event, rebroadcast with my slick editing skills for you.

Wil has been a long-time reporter for The Washington Post, where his piece on Eugene Allen, the butler for several presidents in the White House became a book and was the basis for Lee Daniels The Butler, starring Forrest Whittaker and Oprah Winfrey. You might have heard of them.

Wil has also written books on Sugar Ray Robinson and Thurgood Marshall and Sammy Davis Jr. His talent, ability, and rigor might only be surpassed by his generosity. How generous? He blurbed my book Six Weeks in Saratoga way back in early 2011 before the book came out that summer.

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

Sponsor love: West Virginia Wesleyan College’s MFA in Creative Writing

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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.

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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Sponsor love: West Virginia Wesleyan College’s MFA in Creative Writing

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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Sponsor love: West Virginia Wesleyan College’s MFA in Creative Writing

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 291: ‘Simple is the Way to Go’ with Mirin Fader

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By Brendan O’Meara

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What’s not to love about Mirin Fader (@mirinfader)?

She’s an incredible writer and reporter. She’s a senior staff writer for The Ringer. On top of that, she’s generous and insightful, and she brought all of that and more to this episode of the podcast.

We talk about her feature on Tyler Skaggs, a notable selection for Year’s Best Sports Writing.

We also dig into her biography Giannis: The Improbable Rise of an MVP.

We talk about failure and persistence and writing and ledes. This is a dream conversation if you’re into the nuts and bolts of writing and reporting long features and books.

Episode 290: ‘Only in Oregon’: How Drawing Political Cartoons is All About the Writing with Jesse Springer

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By Brendan O’Meara

This week, Jesse Springer, an Oregon-based political cartoonist and graphic designer, comes on the show to talk about his new book of cartoons Only in Oregon 1996-2021: 26 Years of Oregon Political Cartoons.

He came by the studio and brought his own very good microphone, so the two of us got to make eye contact. What a concept!

Sure, this is a very specific book that will have appeal largely — if not only — for Oregonians, but we do riff on whether or not political cartoons are journalism, his creative process for working through ideas, getting people to have better “art self esteem,” and a lot more.

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

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.

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!

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