x

75% of people globally want unbiased news (Pew Research) but are concerned they're not getting that.

Get balanced coverage with Symby. See how stories are covered across diverse outlets and spot when one side covers a story the other skips.

PODCAST

The Creative Nonfiction Podcast with Brendan O"Meara

Brendan O"Meara

The Creative Nonfiction Podcast with Brendan O"Meara is a weekly podcast that showcases leaders in narrative journalism, essay, memoir, documentary film, radio and podcasts about the art and craft of telling true stories. Follow the show @creativenonfictionpodcast on Instagram and visit patreon.com/cnfpod to support!

arts books

All Episodes

78:12

Episode 502: Christa Hillstrom Takes Pride in Her...

The Creative Nonfiction Podcast with Brendan O"Meara ·

2025/12/05

"Take pride in your rejections. It's a tough industry for putting yourself out there. You're like, doing a ton of work up front, not knowing if anyone will be interested in it. It's very easy to feel deflated about it. Your rejections are reaching for things that maybe aren't easy reaches," says Christa Hillstrom, writer of 14,445 and Counting for The Atavist.It’s that Atavistian time of the month. Not much by way of spoilers, but you know you’re in for a double dose of CNFin’ insights as we will

en

72:12

Episode 501: Julian Brave NoiseCat Aimed for a Woven...

The Creative Nonfiction Podcast with Brendan O"Meara ·

2025/11/28

"It's not actually about the questions you ask. It's about shutting up," says Julian Brave NoiseCat, author of We Survived the Night.It’s episode 501 with Julian Brave NoiseCat, author of the memoir We Survived the Night. It’s published by Knopf. It’s a pretty spectacular debut and we have a lively chat about it and the writing and structuring of it. Julian is a writer, filmmaker, powwow dancer, and student of Salish art and history.Julian, man, what a cool dude. He really came to play ball, which

en

65:01

Episode 500: Structure, Spec, and Panic with John McPhee

The Creative Nonfiction Podcast with Brendan O"Meara ·

2025/11/21

"Anything beats writing. Writing is tough," says John McPhee, staff writer for The New Yorker and author of more than thirty books of nonfiction.Hey CNFers, this is Episode 500 of The Creative Nonfiction Podcast, the show where I speak to tellers of true tales about the true tales they tell. There are kilometer stones like 100, 200, 300, and 400, but this one, this is a milestone and it features the writer and journalist who made me want to write narrative nonfiction in the first place: John

en

65:43

Episode 499: The Post-Book Malaise is Real with...

The Creative Nonfiction Podcast with Brendan O"Meara ·

2025/11/14

"You start to wonder was it all worth it? Or what's the point in trying to do it again? You know, if there's going to be more disappointment in the future. I think it is something that you know probably just changes as you go on, regardless, right? I want to get that second book under my belt so it's not all just on this one, this one baby, you know?" says Maggie Mertens.Maggie is the author of Better, Faster, Farther: How Running Changed Everything We Know About Women (Algonquin Books). It’s a

en

78:56

Episode 498: Sasha Bonet on Not Holding Back

The Creative Nonfiction Podcast with Brendan O"Meara ·

2025/11/07

"I have this desire to write as a novelist might write but write nonfiction," says Sasha Bonet, the author of The Waterbearers: A Memoir of Mothers and Daughters (Knopf).Today we have the brilliant writer, the brilliant mind, Sasha Bonet, author of The Waterbearers: A Memoir of Mothers and Daughters. This book is a masterpiece that chronicles the matriarchal lineage of Sasha’s family, and the pain, and the struggle, and the triumph of will, of the slow, methodical, generational march forward and the

en

66:17

Episode 497: The Seduction of Art Thievery with Jack...

The Creative Nonfiction Podcast with Brendan O"Meara ·

2025/10/31

"I kinda hate it when people say writing is fun," says Jack Rodolico, author The Atavist original "The Blue Book Burglar."Today we feature Jack Rodolico, who is a bit of an audio maven, but he comes to us hot off the Atavist presses to talk about "The Blue Book Burglar: The Social Register was a who’s who of America’s rich and powerful— the heirs of robber barons, scions of political dynasties, and descendants of Mayflower passengers. It was also the perfect hit list for the country’s

en

67:33

Episode 496: Jeff Pearlman Finds the Little Guys

The Creative Nonfiction Podcast with Brendan O"Meara ·

2025/10/24

“So much misery. It is so much misery. It is so hard. It's not natural, locking yourself in your room for three years to focus on one person is not mentally healthy. Leigh Montville, great, great writer, said to me years ago, he's like, ‘It's an unnatural thing. You spend two years in a hole to come out for two weeks, you know?’” — Jeff Pearlman, author of Only God Can Judge Me.Today we have Jeff Pearlman returning to the show to talk about his 11th book, his latest book, Only God Can Judge Me: The

en

69:15

Episode 495: On Being Merciless with Peter Rubin of...

The Creative Nonfiction Podcast with Brendan O"Meara ·

2025/10/17

"When I came in [to Longreads], I didn't come in and say, I think we need to grow aggressively. I said, 'Let's figure out who we are. Let's figure out what other people aren't doing, that we do , and that we can do better.' And so the only real thing that changed when I first came in was to try to make the editors known quantities," says Peter Rubin, head of publishing at Automattic, where he works primarily with Longreads, but also The Atavist Magazine.Today we have Peter Rubin. He’s on the pod to

en

77:34

Episode 494: Co-Writing a Memoir, Becoming a...

The Creative Nonfiction Podcast with Brendan O"Meara ·

2025/10/10

"As a reader, if I were a fan reading this book, I want the good, the bad and the ugly. I want you to rip the band aid off and tell the truth. Because, from my from my experience, I've read a lot of memoirs that are super boring and just fluff," says Jeremy X. Wagner, co-author of Curtis Duffy's Fireproof: Memoir of a Chef (Dead Sky Publishing).We have Jeremy X. Wagner on the show today. This dude is a stone-cold badass and the co-author/ghost writer of Fireproof: Memoir of a Chef (Dead Sky

en

78:16

Episode 493: Masha Hamilton Asks Is the Writing Worth...

The Creative Nonfiction Podcast with Brendan O"Meara ·

2025/10/03

"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

en

52:01

Episode 492: The Daniel Littlewood Takeover...

The Creative Nonfiction Podcast with Brendan O"Meara ·

2025/09/26

"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

en

73:31

Episode 491: How Tracy Slater Broke Her Book into Steps

The Creative Nonfiction Podcast with Brendan O"Meara ·

2025/09/19

"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

en

76:30

Episode 490: Seeing the Fish and the Tank with Jeff...

The Creative Nonfiction Podcast with Brendan O"Meara ·

2025/09/19

"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

en

85:20

Episode 489: Staying Power, Book Promotion, Platform,...

The Creative Nonfiction Podcast with Brendan O"Meara ·

2025/09/12

"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

en

59:25

Episode 488: Bill McKibben, the Dark Realist, Faces...

The Creative Nonfiction Podcast with Brendan O"Meara ·

2025/09/12

"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

en

82:36

Episode 487: Robert Weintraub and the 'American...

The Creative Nonfiction Podcast with Brendan O"Meara ·

2025/09/05

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

en

64:57

Episode 486: Cartooning is the Children's Table of...

The Creative Nonfiction Podcast with Brendan O"Meara ·

2025/08/29

"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

en

67:41

Episode 485: Tensions and Textures with Poet Patrycja...

The Creative Nonfiction Podcast with Brendan O"Meara ·

2025/08/22

"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

en

66:03

Episode 484: Rax King is Sloppy

The Creative Nonfiction Podcast with Brendan O"Meara ·

2025/08/15

"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

en

77:44

Episode 483: Off the Page and Into the Ears with...

The Creative Nonfiction Podcast with Brendan O"Meara ·

2025/08/15

"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

en

523 results

Similar Podcasts

Start The Breakthrough Full Audiobook Now, Thriller Fans!

thebookvoice.com

Get Hooked On The Life-Enhancing Full Audiobook Experience!

thebookvoice.com

西四五条

主播郑捕头

Podcast Patapoe

0d0a

On Mic Podcast

Jordan Rich