The Creative Nonfiction Podcast with Brendan O'Meara

"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

"That is the main difference between storytelling for the ear and writing, is that the cost of revisions is so much higher," says Julia Barton.We have Julia Barton. Julia was the third hire, I think I have that right, with Pushkin Industries, the podcast giant founded by Malcolm Gladwell. She was the executive editor of Pushkin and helped develop Revisionist History and Against the Rules, the latter by the journalist and uber best seller Michael Lewis. She, quite literary, edits with her ears. Now she consults on stories as part of her company RadioWright.I met Julia briefly at the Power of Narrative Conference in Boston, where she’s also a Nieman Fellow, as her talk followed mine. I did not attend her talk and I feel great shame about that, but my battery was in the negative after my talk and I just needed to disappear, the plight of the introvert. I could have learned a LOT since her talk was about the grammar of audio stories. I atoned by inviting her on the podcast to talk about her auditory journey.So Julia has a cool newsletter called Continuous Wave, which is a weekly newsletter exploring the forgotten history of broadcast and all electronic media. It’s very specific, which is what you want from a newsletter. She’s the founder of RadioWright, she is @bartona104 on IG.  We talk about: Editing audio stories and how it’s different than print What’s the ideal length for a podcast be it narrative or interview The cost of revisions Scratch mixes and dry mixes Animal vs. Mineral editing Picturing the ideal interview in your head And more!Order The Front RunnerNewsletter: Rage Against the AlgorithmWelcome to Pitch ClubShow notes: brendanomeara.com

"You have to finish it out. You have to report it, even if it's financially a terrible idea," says Matthew Wolfe.OK, it’s that Atavistian time of the month so we’re here to talk about Matthew Wolfe’s “The Talented Mr. Bruseaux: He made his name in Chicago investigating racial violence, solving crimes, and exposing corruption. But American’s first Black private detective was hiding secrets of his own.” Go to magazone.atavist.com to read it.So we’ll be hearing from Matt in due time. It’s not Matt’s first story with the Atavist and we talk a little about his first story with the Atavist as well.Matt is a journalist and I believe he wrapped up a PhD in sociology. He’s got a book coming out next year. We’ll be sure to tout that when the time comes.Batting leadoff here is none other than lead editor Jonah Ogles. Jonah and I talk about the ideal writer to work with and get into how he edited Matt’s pieceMatt's first Atavist story was “The Ghosts of Pickering Trail.” His work has appeared in the New York Times, the New York Times Magazine, National Geographic, The Atlantic, Harper’s, Pop-Up Magazine, the New Republic … hold on ... maybe I should just read the publications he hasn’t written for. Oh, wait, there are none. Shit. You can find more about Matt at matthewwolfe.net.Matt likes to lean on TV and screenplays as a means to developing stories. He uses the Dan Harmon Story Circle to help with structure, and I’ll link up to that in the show notes. We talk about not being mercenary about stories and leaning into the ones that won’t let go, and one of the more bizarre recommendations you’ll ever hear.Order The Front RunnerNewsletter: Rage Against the AlgorithmWelcome to Pitch ClubShow notes: brendanomeara.com

"Listening to podcasts, it's like, how do I start making them?  That's been my approach, essentially try and take that beginner mindset into anything and try to teach myself new skills," says Mark Armstrong.Who do we have today? It’s Mark Armstrong! He is a producer, a writer, a singer, working at the intersection of storytelling and digital media. Does that make him intersectional? Hell, yes.Mark is the founder of Longreads, the hashtag phenomenon back when social media was cool. Now he’s the editor of the Nieman Storyboard, which is where all us narrative journalists go to get jealous of one another. He hosts the Nieman Storyboard podcast and he’s also the co-founder of Ursa Story Company that he created with Dawnie Walton and Deesha Philyaw. Intersectional, indeed.So Mark is a pretty rad guy, great guy. He was one of the five people in the audience for event in Seattle. I tell you, five people in a room made for 100 is … upsetting, but he was so generous to come by. We got our picture taken together. See that in the show notesIn this episode we talk about: Beginner’s mindset Trying new things just to fuck around The importance of a host’s curation Why he started the Nieman Storyboard Podcast And the myriad ways we as journalists can try to make a buckIt’s some nice dialogue here. A real conversation. You can learn more about Mark at markarms.com and follow him on Instagram @markarms.Order The Front RunnerNewsletter: Rage Against the AlgorithmWelcome to Pitch ClubShow notes: brendanomeara.com

"Yeah, join the club of people who feel inadequate," says Dana Jeri Maier, a cartoonist and author of the graphic book on creativity Skip to the Fun Parts.This incredible artist is the author of Skip to the Fun Parts: Cartoons and Complaints About the Creative Process. It’s one of the best books on creativity because it deals with doubt, it deals with jealousy, it deals with ideas, it deals with perfectionism. Dana is a hilarious cartoonist and you should pick up a Front Runner and also a copy of Skip to the Fun Parts.I’ve long wanted to be a cartoonist. I know there’s no perfect job, but I love the idea of creating something funny and whimsical and not having to talk to as many people as being a biographer entails.Dana, Dana, Dana, is a contributor to the New Yorker Daily Shouts and the creator behind the cartoon series The Worried Well. She has illustrated for The Phillips Collection, the DC Public Library, Politics and Prose, and Museum Hack. She’s into improv and she lives in DC with her two cats and man husband.We talk about her influences, voice and style, how she doesn’t trust anyone with a neat desk, bad ideas, jealousy, and a lot more. She’s a real treat.Learn more about her at danajerimaier.com and on IG @danajerimaier.Order The Front RunnerNewsletter: Rage Against the AlgorithmWelcome to Pitch ClubShow notes: brendanomeara.com