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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!

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All Episodes

72:03

Episode 515: Pitching Stories and Not Topics with...

The Creative Nonfiction Podcast with Brendan O"Meara ·

2026/03/06

"The worst thing you can do is pitch a topic, not a story. You start with a topic. I like to talk to a few people before I write a pitch, which can be difficult because people you're asking to talk to don't know where it's going. I just look for topics that interest me first, and I dig down to an expert, and then from the expert, I try and find individual stories within that," says Peter Ward, whose "Master and Commander" appeared in The Atavist Magazine.It’s that Atavistian time of the month, so

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65:39

Episode 514: Tony Rehagen is Never and Always on the...

The Creative Nonfiction Podcast with Brendan O"Meara ·

2026/02/27

"Come to editors with solutions, not with problems. A lot of young freelance writers will be like, 'Hey, hook me up with this editor. Do this and do that.' And I'm like, 'I can connect you, but you better have pitches. If you don't come with the idea you're just a problem,'" says Tony Rehagen, a long-time freelance writer.Seth Wickersham put me in touch with a colleague of his, someone he went to grad school with by the name of Tony Rehagen. Now, he’s a special kind of freelancer in that he’s a

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68:53

Episode 513: Cutting the Toothbrush in Half with...

The Creative Nonfiction Podcast with Brendan O"Meara ·

2026/02/20

"I wanted to keep reporting, and I'm like, it's not ready yet. And [a friend] reminded me over and over that this is a sales pitch. It's a proposal. The agents and publishers just want to know you can put a story together and tell a story that's longer than 2,000 words, and that there's some narrative arc to it," says Melanie D.G. Kaplan, author of Lab Dog: A Beagle and His Human Investigate the Surprising World of Animal Research (Hachette).Today we have Melanie DG Kaplan, author of Lab Dog. Not

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66:30

Episode 512: Mary Margaret Alvarado Likes Her Drafts...

The Creative Nonfiction Podcast with Brendan O"Meara ·

2026/02/13

"A certain sort of dogged obsessiveness seems to help. I remember hearing Tobias Wolfe speak once that talent is wonderful and widely distributed on Earth, but sitting down and putting in the hours is where it's at," says Mary Margaret Alvarado, who wrote "That's Somebody's Son" for The Atavist.It’s a little later than planned, but here we feature Mary Margaret Alvarado’s piece for The Atavist Magazine titled “That’s Somebody’s Son: Three Mothers, One Struggle: saving their children with

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68:42

Episode 511: Writing to Leave the Past in the Past...

The Creative Nonfiction Podcast with Brendan O"Meara ·

2026/02/06

"To be a good writer, you have to really get into the visceral parts of the experience, right? You have to bring someone into that experience with you, which requires you to go back and understand every detail, every memory, all the visceral aspects of the experience, the sounds, the smells, everything that was happening," says Jane Marie Chen, author of Like a Wave We Break.Today we have Jane Marie Chen, author of Like a Wave We Break: A memoir of Falling Apart and Finding Myself. It’s published by

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67:57

Episode 510: Daniel Pollack-Pelzner's Doesn't Waste...

The Creative Nonfiction Podcast with Brendan O"Meara ·

2026/01/30

"My teenage daughter looked at me. She said, 'Oh, Dad, you should put that in a folder called nobody cares.' Okay, not everything I learn will be in this book. And then the question became, 'What is Lin-Manuel learning from this story?' And if he's not learning anything from it, even if it's fun, it's got to go in the deleted scenes," says Daniel Pollack-Pelzner, author of Lin-Manuel Miranda: The Education of an Artist (Simon & Schuster).Daniel Pollack-Pelzner, the Notorius DPP, is charismatic

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67:42

Episode 509: Howard Bryant Masterfully Braids History...

The Creative Nonfiction Podcast with Brendan O"Meara ·

2026/01/23

"Characters make books. Why are these guys in opposition? And were they actually really? How can you be in opposition with someone you never met? How can you be in opposition with somebody who's essentially sharing the same plight you're sharing in the country? And that brings in the other character. It's Branch Rickey. Branch Rickey is the puppet master of this entire book. Branch Rickey is the puppet master of that entire period," says Howard Bryant, author of Kings and Pawns: Jackie Robinson and

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70:03

Episode 508: Motivated by Slights and Play Fighting...

The Creative Nonfiction Podcast with Brendan O"Meara ·

2026/01/16

"I spent several months trying to narrow down the cast. I had access to so many people with interesting stories. But what [my agent] said to me over and over again was, 'narrative arc, narrative arc,' all the time. What he needed to know in order to sell the book was like, 'Where does this book start? And if you can't tell me where it ends, at least tell me what are the ups and downs? What's gonna happen along the way?" says Alison Lyn Miller, author of Rough House: A Father, a Son, and the Pursuit

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69:07

Episode 507: 'Enshittification' Author Cory Doctorow...

The Creative Nonfiction Podcast with Brendan O"Meara ·

2026/01/09

"Practically speaking, mostly what I'm doing is I'm writing in a hotel room and then writing in the taxi, and then if the TSA queue is long, I might whip my laptop out and balance it on the stanchion and do some more writing, and then get on the other side and write in the lounge and then write on the plane, and whether that means that the laptop's nearly vertical because I'm on a discount airline with with terrible seat pitch, just writing. And so that's it, right? What my real practice is ... I

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68:39

Episode 506: Alexandra Marvar and the Trough of...

The Creative Nonfiction Podcast with Brendan O"Meara ·

2026/01/02

"I feel like many of us can relate to that, like, that's the trough of despair, right? Like, that moment where you're energetic optimism, diving in, and then, like, that's the wall of regret, where you're like, 'What was I thinking? This is not a story,'" says Alexandra Marvar, whose piece on Lummie Jenkins was revived by The Atavist.Today we Alex Marvar, this month’s featured Atavist writer, but this is something of a twist. Seyward Darby, who we will hear from in a sec, has launched an initiative

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76:30

Episode 505: Leah Sottile and Ryan Haas Talk 'Hush',...

The Creative Nonfiction Podcast with Brendan O"Meara ·

2025/12/26

"We always were having conversations about, if we can't solve it, what then? What is this about? Why isn't it solved? And what is our job? Is the job of a journalist to solve crimes? No, it's to document. So what are we documenting? We're documenting what had to happen for there to be no answer in a situation where there should be an answer," says Leah Sottile, reporter, writer, Hush."Sometimes making yourself uncomfortable is the way to find new creativity, or to challenge yourself to find a smart

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41:14

Episode 504: Seth Wickersham and the Macbethian...

The Creative Nonfiction Podcast with Brendan O"Meara ·

2025/12/19

"You're constantly asking lean, open, neutral questions that start broad and then narrow, and you're asking more lean, open, neutral questions based on their answers. When you do that, it tells the subjects that you're actually listening to them very intensely, and you're asking questions based on the things that they say. And that accelerates trust and intimacy, I think, in a better way than kind of betting on your personality," says Seth Wickersham, the bestselling author of American Kings: A

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49:37

Episode 503: An Atmospheric River of Rejection with...

The Creative Nonfiction Podcast with Brendan O"Meara ·

2025/12/12

"I will always go back to the well, and I will write until I die," says Jason Brown, author of Character Witness.Jason Brown is here. He is a brilliant short story writer and the author of the memoir Character Witness (University of Nebraska Press). It’s an incredible book and we recorded this conversation at the end of October as the fourth and final LIVE podcast of the year at Gratitude Brewing here in Eugene.Jason, as luck would have it, teaches at the University of Oregon in its writing

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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