The Creative Nonfiction Podcast with Brendan O'Meara

"This has to be meaningful to you. It has to be a story that won't leave you alone, a story that you're willing to rearrange your calendar for," says Masha Hamilton, whose Atavist Magazine story is titled "I've     Gone to Look for America."Today we have Masha Hamilton, a journalist, a novelist, a fan of the show, a fan of Pitch Club. You’ll want to visit mashahamilton.com to learn more about her wide-ranging career covering the world. She’s the author of five novels and trying to sell her sixth. She was at one point the director of communications and public diplomacy at the US embassy in Kabul.Her story for the Atavist is about her driving the entire length of I-95 with her photographer son Cheney, and stopping at just about every rest stop to speak with strangers about how they feel about our country. “Conversations and revelations about an ailing nation along Interstate 95.” Man, those Atavist editors sure can write the hell out of a dek.Guess who’s back!? Seyward Darby! Do your best Kermit the Frog dance. Very nice to hear her and this piece challenged Seyward in ways I didn’t see coming: Meaning, she didn’t share Masha’s optimism or hope. Seyward, for lack of a better word, disagreed with it, so there was an interesting tension she brought to the edit.For Masha's part, we talk about: Novels as complimentary to her nonfiction Covering societies in change Healing through story How this was piece was a therapy session Accelerated intimacy Endings Middles Finding the meaning Writing you rearrange your calendar for And belonging as practiceOrder The Front RunnerNewsletter: Rage Against the AlgorithmWelcome to Pitch ClubShow notes: brendanomeara.com

"My editor was like, hold on, you need to put your thumb on the scale of why this matters. Now, there's no first person in this, but you have your thumb on the scale, you need to assert your own point of view. Like, this matters, why? says Brendan O'Meara, author of The Front Runner: The Life of Steve Prefontaine Mariner Books.Who the heck does this host think he is being a guest on his own podcast? The nerve of this guy. That’s right, for the third live taping of the Creative Nonfiction Podcast at Gratitude Brewing, I was interviewed by the brilliant Daniel Littlewood, who kinda makes me look and sound like a jabroni’s jabroni.Daniel is Group Creative Director at The Explainer Studio at Vox Media, Inc. He edited the documentary feature film “Don’t Think I’ve Forgotten: Cambodia’s Lost Rock & Roll.” Formerly, he was the lead producer for HuffPost’s Live’s multi-million dollar sponsored content division. He has a tremendously easy-going, conversation nature to interviewing with tremendous shot-clock awareness that required next to no editing on my part.So The Front Runner has, at this point, been out for four months. Daniel and I recorded this on July 27 so the book was only out for two months at that time. This was a painful edit for me because I’m so sick of hearing myself talk and talk and talk. I’m not so sure I took a single breath during this conversation, but Daniel was an incredible partner and if something should happen to me, I want Daniel to take over CNF Pod.In this episode, I talk about: My love of my editor Valorization of pain Making the case for why I was the person to write this book Asserting POV in biography World building And why it was a good thing I forgot the combination of our gun safeRuby McConnell introduces us at Gratitude Brewing.Order The Front RunnerNewsletter: Rage Against the AlgorithmWelcome to Pitch ClubShow notes: brendanomeara.com

"Writing a book is so overwhelming. I need to have a book that's like so many steps in between. So what I do to manage my own anxiety and overwhelm about that is I'm really, really obsessed with breaking everything into little steps so that all I need to do is the next step and then I don't get overwhelmed," says Tracy Slater, author of Together in Manzanar.It’s another Super Size Me CNFin’ Double Feature, Ep. 491 with Tracy Slater. She is the author of Together in Manzanar: The True Story of a Japanese Jewish Family in an American Concentration Camp. It’s published by Chicago Review Press. As Tracy and I talk about in this podcast, this book is sadly of the moment. It happened 80-some years ago, this vile incarceration of Japanese immigrants and Japanese AMERICANS, 2/3rds of them were American citizens, rounded up and shipped to American concentration camps. Disgusting and disgraceful, but these are the histories we need to look dead in the eye, these are the histories THIS administration aims to erase so it's the work of historians, and journalists, and storytellers like Tracy to keep these stories alive.She’s an American writer from Boston living for a bit in Toronto. Her essays and articles have been published in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, Lit Hub, among other places. She’s also the author of the memoir The Good Shufu. In this conversation we talk about: How she broke up with her first agent How sadly of the moment Together in Manzanar is Being a white person writing this story and worrying of blind spots How she handled the overwhelm of it all And how the story chooses herShe also thanked me and the podcast in her acknowledgements, which is really sweet and made me feel good. As you know, CNFers, this podcast often feels pretty uni-directional, so to know it’s “working,” that it’s of use and helpful, that’s validating. You can learn more about tracy at tracyslater.com and follow her on Bluesky at tracyslater.bsky.social or on IG at  at good_shufu. I don’t know about you, but I’m ready for this. Order The Front RunnerNewsletter: Rage Against the AlgorithmWelcome to Pitch ClubShow notes: brendanomeara.com

"When I got back to [writing], it was like an athlete or a martial artist coming back to the practice, and the endorphins start running back. And you remember the joy that you had in it, also the struggles of it, but you're back in it, and then I couldn't be stopped," says Jeff Chang, author of Water,  Mirror, Echo.Today we have Jeff Chang, and what a great conversation this was. He’s the author of the beefy biography Water, Mirror, Echo: Bruce Lee and the Making of Asian America. It’s published by Mariner Books, so we share a publisher here. Pretty cool.He’s also the author of Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation, which was the winner of the American Book Award, Who We Be: A Cultural History of Race in Post-Civil Rights America, and We Gon’ Be Alright: Notes on Race and Resegregation.He’s a writer, host, and cultural organizer known for his work in culture, politics, the arts, and music. His work has appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, Los Angeles Times,  and the Believer, among many others. He has a great Substack at zentronix.substack.com and you can follow him on Instagram @zentronix. You can learn more about Jeff at jeffchang.net.We talk about: How hip-hop influenced his work Trust and relationships Voice Compression And stealing time to writeWhy don't you settle in?Order The Front RunnerNewsletter: Rage Against the AlgorithmWelcome to Pitch ClubShow notes: brendanomeara.com

"For many of us, myself included, it's easy to want to be on the New York Times bestseller list, or the USA Today bestseller list, and to try to get an amazing number of week-one sales, but it's important to remember that those lists are really hard to get on, and there can be this nice long tail in terms of the impact of a book where maybe it doesn't necessarily get a ton of sales in that first week or that first month. But over time, it continues to sell, right? And then you get these bumps, and you realize that, oh, this book has staying power," says Mallary Tenore Tarpley.Mallary is here today for a double-feature Friday. She’s the author of Slip: Life in the Middle of Eating Disorder Recovery (Simon & Schuster/Simon Element). It’s pretty heavy shit, man. She developed a disordered relationship to food when her mother passed away when she was just 11 years old. Mallary spent years in treatment and the book blends her personal story with the ballast of science and outward-facing reporting, memoir-plus as it was pitched. We’ll call it Memoir Max.Mallary has been on the hustle for Slip. She’s everywhere. She’s posting. She’s newslettering. She’s beating the drum. She’s an example of what a modern author must do in this age. I’d say take a look at what she’s doing and maybe cherry pick what works for you. But speaking from experience, really nobody is going to do it for you.She graduated from Providence College and earned an MFA in creative nonfiction from Goucher College, where she started Slip. She worked with my dear friend Maggie Messitt on it for a bit.Mallary is an assistant professor of practice at the University of Texas where she teaches journalism classes. She started her career at The Poynter Institute where she would become the managing editor of the website, poynter.org. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Teen Vogue, Nieman Storyboard and she has a Substack, don’t we all, called Write at the Edge, at mallary.substack.com. You can also learn more about her at mallarytenoretarpley.com and follow her on LinkedIn or Instagram as well.We talk a lot about  Platform and publicity How she vetted a freelance publicist Staying power And some of her best memories working alongside Roy Peter Clark at PoynterOrder The Front RunnerNewsletter: Rage Against the AlgorithmWelcome to Pitch ClubShow notes: brendanomeara.com

"The point of my book and the point of this big day of action that we're doing across the country is to drive that notion away that this isn't alternative energy, that it's the obvious, straightforward, common sense and very beautiful way to power the world going forward. To use the analogy I've been using, it's not any longer the Whole Foods of energy: nice, but pricey. It is now the Costco of energy: cheap available in bulk on the shelf, ready to go," says Bill McKibben, author of Here Comes the Sun.Today we have Bill McKibben, author, at last count, of 447 books, including his latest Here Comes the Sun: A Last Chance for the Climate and a Fresh Chance for Civilization. It’s published by Norton and if ever there was an American president open to the idea of non-fossil-fuel energy solutions, it’s this one.Photosynthesize, baby, photosynthesize, just rolls off the tongue.So if you’re a real drip and don’t know who Bill McKibben is, let me tell you a thing or two: He’s the author 19 books, including his pioneering book on climate called The End of Nature, and one of my favorite books on rethinking consumerism, Hundred Dollar Holiday. Aside from being a journalist basically his entire life, he’s an activist who helped found 350.org, and Third Act, which is a movement of Americans over 60 who bring their collective power to the climate and democracy fights. We call them silver-haired ponytails here in Eugene.And his latest venture is SunDay, a creative climate project that celebrates solar energy through art, storytelling, and public engagement. The day of action is Sunday, September 21, whereby they'll celebrate solar, host e-bike parades, give heat pump tours, and rally for change. There’s a SunDay event in Eugene, but I’ll unfortunately be burning fossil fuels that day driving up to Portland for a book event. But visit sunday.earth to find a local event near you. Those solar panel subsidies are going bye bye since the wannabe fuhrer will be gutting anything that doesn’t belch CO2 into the air.Bill also writes the incredibly popular Substack The Crucial Years, which has nearly 100,000 subscribers. You can learn more about Bill and his books at billmckibben.com, and you’re about to learn more about how he told William Shawn to fuck off, his start as a sports writer, being a pioneer writing about climate, and how he wrote Here Comes the Sun in about one month.Order The Front RunnerNewsletter: Rage Against the AlgorithmWelcome to Pitch ClubShow notes: brendanomeara.com

Robert Weintraub is a best selling author and, most recently, wrote "American Hindenburg" for The Atavist Magazine..We’re going to hear from lead editor Jonah Ogles about his side of the table and how he advises people to model their stories after previously published ones and how there’s never really a wasted moment by doing as much research as possible. Either you find out there’s nothing there, or you find out there’s there there and you have more grist for the mill.Robert is the best selling author of No Better Friend, The Divine Miss Marble, The House that Ruth Built, and The Victory Season. He has a Substack called NYC 1000 where he counts down the top 1,000 sporting events in New York City. That’s at weintraubr.substack.com. Robert cut his teeth as a television producer at ESPN, but soon began writing for Slate, The New York Times, The Guardian, Grantland, and now The Atavist. We talk about creating these historical narratives and grounding the characters in their present, looking at a magazine and then thinking what kind of stories you can pitch there, and how his Atavist story started as a book proposal. You can learn more about Robert at robertweintraubauthor.com.Order The Front RunnerNewsletter: Rage Against the AlgorithmWelcome to Pitch ClubShow notes: brendanomeara.com

"I really love this medium. I think cartooning is an incredible medium. There aren't a lot of rules. You can, if you can, really make it up. You can make it suit you," says Roz Chast a cartoonist and artist whose work routinely appears in The New Yorker.So today we have Roz Chast. You know Roz Chast, and if you don’t, quite frankly I hope we never meet. She’s a long time cartoonist for The New Yorker whose work is kinda of panicky and bleak and goofy and … heightened … and wicked smaht. She’s the author of Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?, Going into Town, and What I Hate from A to Z and what brought Roz to the podcast is a two 1,000-piece puzzles and a 2026 wall calendar now out by Workman Publishing. Really cool, and you can find those at hachettebookgroup.com.Cool stuff.Roz was, of course, a joy to speak with. I watched several interviews with her in preparation for this and I reached out to Dana Jeri Maier for questions because Dana loves Roz, and is a working cartoonist, so it seemed like a good shoulder to tap.Roz is a true artist. She paints these pysanka eggs, which are dyed eggs with cool paintings on them. She’s into block printing now and she does some rug weaving things, too. I’m sure there’s a formal term for it. She was inducted into the Society of Illustrators Hall of Fame in 2019. She won the National Book Critics’ Circle award for Autobiography in 2014, and also was a National Book Award finalist for Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant? Her work routinely appears in The New Yorker and in this episode we talk about: The ricketyness of a freelance career How being an outsider made her a better cartoonist How cartooning is like being at the children’s table of art Aging parents And her experience on The Simpsons.Lots of rich stuff here that I hope you enjoy. I know I did.Order The Front RunnerNewsletter: Rage Against the AlgorithmWelcome to Pitch ClubShow notes: brendanomeara.com

"God, I feel like I'm still enduring that, like it's this sort of ongoing thing where I'm not sure I ever if I'll ever get to a place where I feel like my work and ambitions for the work and daydreams about writing and art-making ever meet my taste," says Patrycja Humienik.For Ep. 485 we've got Patrycja Humienik. She’s a poet and her debut collection is We Contain Landscapes and it is published by Tin House. Patrycja is the daughter of Polish immigrants and is a writer, editor, and teaching artist. You can follow her on the gram @jej_sen. So Patrycja and I had nice little jam sesh about: Trusting the path The Magic of Revision Weekly Writing Rituals with her Work Wife Tension and Textures And writing without the pressure of publicationSome really rich stuff. Her work has appeared in the New Yorker, that rag, Gulf Coast, Poetry Society of America and many others. She works between borders: of disciplines, language, body, art activism, conflict/transformation. She’s a true artist, man. You can learn more about her at www.patrycjasara.com.Order The Front RunnerNewsletter: Rage Against the AlgorithmWelcome to Pitch ClubShow notes: brendanomeara.com

"I am tyrannical about noise and about quiet. I don't feel that I can control the amount of mess I make. I mean, I know I can, but I kind of can't. And there's just so many things about my character that are really detrimental to having a writing process, which I need, and it's just so opposed to everything that's going on in my disgustoid little spirit," says Rax King, author of Sloppy.As I tell Rax in this conversation, I hadn’t been reading a lot of what I’d call “fun” books. I wasn’t having much by way of fun reading for a long time and that changed with Sloppy, which isn’t to say the book doesn’t have its heavy moments, but it’s couched in a buoyant and irreverent voice that I found very appealing.Like Melissa Febos, Rax is something of a quote machine with acerbic wit that made this episode really electric. That’s something I notice from voice-heavy memoirists and essayists. Like, if you’re not throwing heat as an essayist, you gotta work on your game. Maybe there are some who can lyric their way through, but that’s not my taste, personally.  I need people pointing out the absurdities and their complicity in the absurdity. I don’t even know what that means, but it sounded good.Rax King also is the author of Tacky: Love Letters to the Worst Culture We Have to Offer and the co-host of Low Culture Boil with Courtney Rawlings and Amber Rollo. Rax's work has been nominated for a James Beard Award and has appeared in Food & Wine, MEL Magazine, Glamour and Electric Literature. You can learn more about Rax at her website raxkingisdead.com or follow her on the gram @raxkingisdead.We talk about revisions, her sobriety, her sloppiness, money issues, steady-income spouses and a lot of other stuff. She really brought the heat.Order The Front RunnerNewsletter: Rage Against the AlgorithmWelcome to Pitch ClubShow notes: brendanomeara.com