memoir – Home of The Creative Nonfiction Podcast

Episode 424: Tommy Tomlinson on Aiming for One-Word Summations, the Blurt, and ‘Dogland’

By Brendan O’Meara

Tommy Tomlinson (@tommyltomlinson) is on the show to talk about dogs … and writing … and about his book Dogland: Passion, Glory, and Lots of Slobber at the Westminster Dog Show (Avid Reader Press).

Tommy is a journalist and author whose work has appeared in Esquire, ESPN the Magazine, Garden & Gun, and a million other places. He’s also the author of the brilliant memoir Elephant in the Room: One Fat Man’s Quest to Get Smaller in a Growing America.

I have a soft spot in my heart for very accomplished writers and journalists who speak so openly and candidly about writing and doing the work, and Tommy brings all that to this conversation.

Episode 418: Surrendering to the Subconscious with John Julius Reel

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By Brendan O’Meara

Hey, CNFers, happy CNFriday, and, boy, what a fun episode we’ve got! It’s John Julius Reel! He’s @johnjuliusreel on the Instagrams and he’s the author of the memoir My Half Orange: A Story of Love and Language in Seville (Tortoise Books).

John is a writer, radio host, and language instructor based out of Spain and My Half Orange (a Spanish idiom for soul mate) bridges his native culture with his adopted one, and it’s the latter where he found a greater place in the world personally and artistically.

In this conversation (Cut down from two hours. I’ll post some of the outtakes for the Patreon gang.) we talk about letting the subconscious in on the joke, how to make memoir relatable, and the never-ending quest to impress your father.

Episode 417: ‘Stories Can Save Us’ and the Enduring Legacy of Matt Tullis

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By Brendan O’Meara

Special episode this week, CNFers, as we celebrate Matt Tullis and his post-humous book Stories Can Save Us: America’s Best Narrative Journalists Explain How (University of Georgia Press).

It’s a collection of transcripts from Matt’s Gangrey the Podcast that includes a special reported afterward written by Justin Heckert (@justinheckert), one of the key ambassadors of this book.

Justin wrote many memorable stories over the last twenty years like a dude inspired by Jackass, Blockbuster Video, the story of an unused ticket, and many, many more. He wrote a great afterward in Walt Harrington’s Artful Journalism and appeared in The Next Wave: America’s New Generation of Great Literary Journalists (The Sager Group).

Episode 416: A Lifelong Search for Voice with Acamea Deadwiler

By Brendan O’Meara

Acamea Deadwiler (@acamea) is here with her debut memoir Daddy’s Little Stranger (Riddle Brook Publishing).

It started as an essay collection, but at the behest of her publisher, she was tasked with making it more of a traditional memoir. The result is a coming-of-age story of a young woman who grew up without a father and how she navigated her early life without that influence. Better put, how she navigated her early life with that absence.

We also talk about her influences, studying inspiration texts, what her basketball career taught her about what it takes to be a writer, and finding that elusive voice. Really rich talk.

Episode 412: Leaving the Emotional Moments Unsaid with Lilly Dancyger

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By Brendan O’Meara

As you know, we love repeat guests on the show, and Lilly Dancyger (@lillydancyger) fit the bill with her new book First Love: Essays on Friendship (Dial Press). This is right up there for a CNFy award, my non-existent gala for the best I’ve experienced in creative nonfiction. Maybe the perfect Galentine’s Day gift.

Lilly’s collection, at least to me, doesn’t feel essay-ish. It’s prismatic, but it feels united, these essays about her girlfriends dating all the way back to her first best friend, her first love, her cousin Sabina.

Lilly also is the author of Negative Space and the editor of Burn it Down. She’s the nonfiction acquisitions editor for Barrelhouse Books and a teacher at Columbia University School of Arts. She also does freelance editor, mainly in the memoir/essay realm.

Episode 411: The Heart Part and Big Dreams with Isa Adney

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By Brendan O’Meara

Pretty rad guest here in Isa Adney (@isaadney). She has been a long-time listener of the show and wouldn’t you know she released a killer little book called The Little Book of Big Dreams: True Stories About People Who Followed a Spark (She Writes Press).

The book is a series of thematic profiles about courageous creators who followed their dreams. Isa interviewed more than 100 people for the book, but only a couple dozen made the cut. The book was a nine-year journey for her and a dream come true in and of itself.

Isa is a writer and documentary producer and is a person who takes agency in her creative work, profiling people for her blog as a means to show she has the chops. As Seth Godin says, if you want to be a marketer, do marketing.

Episode 408: North to Trees, South to Gold with Ruby McConnell

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By Brendan O’Meara

Well, isn’t a treat to hear from Ruby McConnell again? She’ got a new book out, this spring of 2024, Wilderness and the American Spirit (Overcup Books). It’s a book steeped in Oregon lore, but in that Oregonian-ness lies the universal of what the United States has inflicted upon the land, its Native peoples, and how the Applegate Road is the thread that connects seemingly disparate topics.

Ruby, @rubygonewild, also is the author of Ground Truth and A Woman’s Guide to the Wild. Ruby is one of the good ones, dude.

She’s a working writer with multiple projects going, small presses, big presses, freelance, teaching, organizing. She’s a buoyant spirit and always a treasure to have on these here airwaves.

Episode 404: Hanif Abdurraqib’s Nod to Witnessing in ‘There’s Always This Year’

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By Brendan O’Meara

Kinda crazy, right? That someone like Hanif Abdurraqib (@nifmuhammad) would agree to be on this little podcast, which just turned eleven on March 20.

Hanif needs next-to-no introduction, but here’s a little bit about him. His book A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance was a finalist for the National Book Award. He’s the author of the essay collection They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us and the poetry collections A Fortune for Your Disaster and The Crown Ain’t Worth Much. His latest book is There’s Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension (Random House).

It’s a masterpiece; Hanif is a masterpiece.

In this conversation, we talk about productivity, envy, specificity, intentionality, and a nod to witnessing. It’s great stuff, great talk.

Episode 403: Elizabeth Rush Moves Toward Exactitude

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By Brendan O’Meara

Elizabeth Rush returns, friend. This is her third trip to the show, this time to celebrate The Quickening: Creation and Community at the Ends of the Earth (Milkweed).

Liz also is the author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore (Milkweed). Both are wonderful books.

The Quickening deals with climate change and motherhood and shines light on the lesser celebrated laborers that make treks to the Antarctic possible. Oh, yes, she was the writer in residence aboard a giant boat that went to the Thwaites Glacier.

Episode 402: The Stentorian-Voiced Dudely Bro-ness of Rob Harvilla

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For a couple weeks, visit combeyond.bu.edu, use the promo code NARRATIVE25 at checkout and get 25% your tuition for the two-day Power of Narrative Conference. And, no, I don’t get any dough.

By Brendan O’Meara

Rob Harvilla (@robharvilla) returns to talk about the end of his world famous podcast 60 Songs that Explain the 90s and the book based on the same name.

In this conversation we talk about several of his episodes that made an impression on me, namely the “Sabotage,” “It’s Good to be King,” “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” and “Enter Sandman.” We talk about a lot of things that his podcast has meant to him since he conceived of it in 2020, that year we still haven’t seemed to leave yet.