The Creative Nonfiction Podcast with Brendan O'Meara

Lindsay Jill Roth was told by a tutor at a young age that she'd become a writer one day. At the time she laughed, but it came to be. Lindsay is the author of the novel What Pretty Girls Are Made Of and her latest is Romances & Practicalities: A Love Story (Maybe Yours) in 250 Questions.Lindsay talks about the writing of the book, structuring it, and how working in television and radio informed the storytelling mechanics of the book.Pre-order The Front RunnerSponsor: The Power of Narrative Conference. Use CNF15 at checkout for a 15% discount.Newsletter: Rage Against the AlgorithmShow notes: brendanomeara.comSupport: Patreon.com/cnfpod

John Eisenberg grew up surrounded by books. It was no surprise then that he wanted to write them one day. He has written eleven, his latest being Rocket Men: The Black Quarterbacks Who Revolutionized Pro Football.Pre-order The Front RunnerSponsor: The Power of Narrative Conference. Use CNF15 at checkout for a 15% discount.Newsletter: Rage Against the AlgorithmShow notes: brendanomeara.comSupport: Patreon.com/cnfpod

Drew Philp went to Ethiopia to report on the front lines of what was likely a genocide that largely went ignored. His story, "There Will Be No Mercy," is for The Atavist Magazine.Pre-order The Front RunnerSponsor: The Power of Narrative Conference. Use CNF15 at checkout for a 15% discount.Newsletter: Rage Against the AlgorithmShow notes: brendanomeara.comSupport: Patreon.com/cnfpod

Evan Ratliff's work often overlaps with the tech industry whether he's disappearing himself as he did for Wired Magazine, or exploring the murky world of AI voice agents as he did with his blockbuster, smashing, DIY podcast Shell Game. Pre-order The Front RunnerSponsor: The Power of Narrative Conference. Use CNF15 at checkout for a 15% discount.Newsletter: Rage Against the AlgorithmShow notes: brendanomeara.comSupport: Patreon.com/cnfpod

Brooke Champagne (@champagne_brooke) is a writer in the thick of it: the grind of it, the messiness of it, the working-out-of-it. One minute with Brooke and you know you're in for rollicking fun conversation about the essay, about writing, and about Nola Face: A Latina's Life in the Big Easy (University of Georgia Press).Pre-order The Front RunnerSponsor: The Power of Narrative Conference. Use CNF15 at checkout for a 15% discount.Newsletter: Rage Against the AlgorithmShow notes: brendanomeara.comSupport: Patreon.com/cnfpod

Harrison Scott Key knows how to write a funny book, and he did it again, this time with How to Stay Married: The Most Insane Love Story Ever Told (Avid Reader Press). Only this time, he found a way to find the funny as his marriage was under duress.Pre-order The Front RunnerSponsor: The Power of Narrative Conference. Use CNF15 at checkout for a 15% discount.Newsletter: Rage Against the AlgorithmShow notes: brendanomeara.comSupport: Patreon.com/cnfpod

For Andrew Dubbins, stories of this nature are resource intensive, so he’s always seeking the story engine, what drives the narrative forward. In this case, it’s a cops-and-robbers story with sibling discord at the center.It’s that Atavisitan time of the month and we have Andrew Dubbins, a journalist based out of L.A. who tells the tale about the After Dark Bandit: The Police couldn't’ figure out how the perpetrator ripped off two banks at the same time. Until they discovered there wasn't just one robber but a pair of them: identical twin brothers.Pre-order The Front RunnerSponsor: The Power of Narrative Conference. Use CNF15 at checkout for a 15% discount.Newsletter: Rage Against the AlgorithmShow notes: brendanomeara.comSupport: Patreon.com/cnfpod

Stephanie Gorton once fretted over her not-neat process of writing books and soon came to embrace her messiness as a feature, not a bug, while she wrote The Icon & the Idealist: Margaret Sanger, Mary Ware Dennett, and the Rivalry That Brought Birth Control to America (Ecco). (Photo credit Sasha Israel)Pre-order The Front RunnerSponsor: The Power of Narrative Conference. Use CNF15 at checkout for a 15% discount.Newsletter: Rage Against the AlgorithmShow notes: brendanomeara.comSupport: Patreon.com/cnfpod

Jared Sullivan got his start primarily editing and admired the kinds of writers and reporters who do both well, like a David Remnick. Valley So Low is Jared's new book, and it is along the lines of Jonathan Harr’s A Civil Action and illustrates the toll that greed and negligence exert on the people exposed to toxins and the cost cases of this nature take on the legal team, both financial and physical.Jared’s work has appeared in The Atlantic, The New Yorker, Garden & Gun, Men’s Journal, and Field & Stream.Pre-order The Front RunnerSponsor: The Power of Narrative Conference. Use CNF15 at checkout for a 15% discount.Newsletter: Rage Against the AlgorithmShow notes: brendanomeara.comSupport: Patreon.com/cnfpod

Steven Hyden (@steven_hydenwriter) is a music critic for Uproxx, producer of Break Stuff, the podcast about Woodstock 99, story producer for the the documentary Yacht Rock, and the author of Twilight of the Gods, This Isn’t Happening, Hard to Handle, and Long Road. His latest is There Was Nothing You Could Do: Bruce Springtseen’s ‘Born in the USA’ and the End of the Heartland (Hachette Books). For Steven, he keeps his critic brain and his fan brain fully intact. One needs the other.Gosh, we recorded this back in June, and I’m just about caught up with the really old recordings. In this episode we talk about connections and culture, how a critic has the power to ruin a band or album for you, and losing control of a generational narrative. Really great chat about Pearl Jam, Bruce, and writing a book that provides context to the current time and the era it was forged.Sponsor: The Power of Narrative Conference. Use CNF15 at checkout for a 15% discount.Newsletter: Rage Against the AlgorithmShow notes: brendanomeara.comSupport: Patreon.com/cnfpod