349: When a Story Idea Won’t Let a Writer Go - Interview with Jeremy Hance

Today, I have the pleasure of interviewing Jeremy Hance.

Jeremy is writer and freelance environmental journalist, who also happens to cohabitate with mental illnesses. He has named his OCD Steve and his depression goes by the name of Malachi. He is the author of the memoir Baggage: Confessions of a Globetrotting Hypochondriac.

As a journalist, Jeremy is passionate about wildlife conservation, climate change, forests, animal behavior, and indigenous people and many other topics. His work has appeared in Mongabay, the Guardian, HuffPost, Ensia, YaleE360, Sydney Morning Herald and others. His story on the Sumatran rhino was chosen for the 2019 edition of the Best American Science and Nature Writing.

Jeremy has traveled to over 30 countries on five continents and considers himself ridiculously lucky to have spent time with singing rhinos, dinosaur mammals, and angry clown fish. He is graduate of Macalester College with a major in English and minor in History as well as the Great Books Master’s Degree program at St. John’s College. He lives in St. Paul, Minnesota with his wife, daughter, and pooch. When he’s not writing, he enjoys time with friends, cups of tea, long hikes, longer naps, even longer novels, and playing Dungeons and Dragons.

 

In this episode Jeremy and I discuss:

• How he juggled writing about travel, mental illness, and nature in one book.
• Why he chose to write his memoir thematically as opposed to chronologically.
• What myths he hoped to dispel by writing so openly about his mental illness.

 

Plus, his #1 tip for writers.

For more info and show notes: diymfa.com/349