The Creative Nonfiction Podcast with Brendan O'Meara

Latest Episodes:

Episode 467: How to Bounce Back from 'Viscerally Negative' Feedback with Will Bardenwerper May 09, 2025

Show notes

Will Bardenwerper grew up playing baseball and even was a member of his college team at Princeton. As a result, he has a great perspective to write about baseball as he does in Homestand: Small Town Baseball and the Fight for the Soul of America (Doubleday).

That soul, in this book, is partially under attack from private equity firms gobbling up and eradicating minor league baseball teams. It's just one of the many threads of Will's wonderful book.

Podcast Specific Substack at creativenonfictionpodcast.substrack.com.

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Show notes: brendanomeara.com

Episode 466: Katie Goh on Issues of Identity and the Trappings of Mythology May 09, 2025

Show notes

"Mythology can be really a dangerous thing, because mythology feels like it can't be changed, or it's always been something," says Katie Goh, author of Foreign Fruit: A Personal History of the Orange (Tin House Books).

Katie Goh is a writer and editor based out of Edinburgh, Scotland. She’s also the author of the slim book “The End: Surviving the World through Imagined Disasters” about disaster movies. Her work has appeared in The Guardian, Extra Teeth, and VICE. You can learn more about her at katiegoh.co.uk or follow her on IG @katie_goh.

In this conversation we tackle:

The love of being edited
Having to selfish to be a writer
Finding obsessions
Issues of identity
Style and voice
And the trappings of mythology

Podcast Specific Substack at creativenonfictionpodcast.substrack.com.

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Show notes: brendanomeara.com

Episode 465: Miranda Green Searches for the Harm May 02, 2025

Show notes

"You want to be able to nab the details, but then you also want to be able to tell the story of why this matters and who's harmed by this, and finding the harm is oftentimes the hardest part of investigative reporting," Miranda Green, an investigative reporter.

Her latest piece is for The Atavist Magazine titled "All That Glitters" about the seedy underbelly of diamond sales, crypto, and sports ticketing and the man at the center of it all.

In this conversation, we talk about:

How she earns trust
How she navigates background
The structure of the piece
Finding the harm in an investigative story
And her routine (or lack of one)

Podcast Specific Substack at creativenonfictionpodcast.substrack.com.

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Show notes: brendanomeara.com

Episode 464: John Glionna is a Clown Who Makes Balloons That Kids Don't Like Apr 25, 2025

Show notes

"We're sadistic motherf*ckers," says John Glionna, @johnglionna on the Instagrams.

John is a longtime journalist and author of No Friday Night Lights (Bison Books). He made a name for himself at the Los Angeles Times pursuing what would be called "Glionna stories," stories about invisible people who have rich lives all their own.

In this episode we talk about

The Glionna Story
How John didn’t punch down in his writing
Working with Glenn Stout on this book
What he loves most about this kind of work
And solving that thorny question of whether a story needs better writing or better reporting

Podcast Specific Substack at creativenonfictionpodcast.substrack.com.

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Show notes: brendanomeara.com

Episode 463: Leah Sottile on Building Scenes, Sagging Middles, and the Fever Dream of the American New Age Apr 18, 2025

Show notes

"It's kind of a mix of reporting to the very last minute to put off writing, and then when I have to write, having a panic attack, and then, like, booking a hotel room for a week and not leaving that room. This is the thing I have done until I figure it out," says Leah Sottile, in a live event at Gratitude Brewing.

She is the author of Blazing Eye Sees All: Love Has Won, False Prophets, and the Fever Dream of the American New Age (Grand Central). She's also the author of When the Moon Turns to Blood, an Oregon Book Award Finalist.

Leah is a freelance journalism whose work has appeared in The Atavist Magazine, the Washing Post, High Country News, and Outisde. She's the creator of the podcasts Hush, Burn Wild, and Bundyville.

In this podcast we talk about:

The work of John Vaillant (See Ep. 376(
How writing this book made Leah crazy
How New Ageism and Far Right Extremism overlap
Sagging Middles
And not re-victimizing sources
And much more…

Learn more about Leah at leahsottile.com and follower her on Instagram @leah.sottile.

Podcast Specific Substack at creativenonfictionpodcast.substrack.com.

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Show notes: brendanomeara.com

Episode 462: On Podcasting and Gardens with Debbie Millman Apr 11, 2025

Show notes

"I'm much more interested in how a person achieves something than in what they specifically achieved," says Debbie Millman, the "Pod Mother" and OG podcaster, twenty years in for Design Matters.

She's also the author of the new book Love Letter to a Garden (Timber Press).

In this episode, we talk about:

The 20 year arc of Design Matters
What people she’s most drawn to
How she views the narrative arc of an interview
The research
As well as the evergreen themes of her new book on her quest for a garden

You can find Debbie at debbiemillman.com and on Instagram @debbiemillman.

Podcast Specific Substack at creativenonfictionpodcast.substrack.com.

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Show notes: brendanomeara.com

Episode 461: For Nick Davidson, Stories Hunt the Storyteller Apr 04, 2025

Show notes

Nick Davidson, @nickgdavidson on IG, says, "We usually think of hunting stories and looking for ideas, but I feel like it's the other way around: stories hunt the storyteller, and I'm just prey."

Nick's latest piece is for The Atavist Magazine titled "The Balloon That Fell From the Sky."

His work has appeared in Outside, VICE Sports, Garden & Gun, and a million other places of note.

Podcast Specific Substack at creativenonfictionpodcast.substrack.com.

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Newsletter: Rage Against the Algorithm

Show notes: brendanomeara.com

Episode 460:Pulitzer Prize-Winning Biographer Megan Marshall Takes on Personal Essays in 'After Lives' Mar 28, 2025

Show notes

Megan Marshall is the author of After Lives: On Biography and the Mysteries of the Human Heart (Mariner Books), a new collection of essays. Megan won the Pulitzer Prize in 2014 for Margaret Fuller: A New American Life.

Podcast Specific Substack at creativenonfictionpodcast.substrack.com.

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Show notes: brendanomeara.com

Episode 459: Cassidy Randall Talks Forgotten Histories, Sticky Notes, and the Power of Listening Mar 21, 2025

Show notes

“I could suddenly see — and this is how I know when I'm supposed to start writing — is that words start putting themselves together in my head, and I just have to get them out, right? Which doesn't happen all the time, but it did for this," says Cassidy Randall, author of Thirty Below: The Harrowing and Heroic Story of the First All Women's Ascent of Denali (Abrams Books).

Cassidy's work has appeared in National Geographic, the New York Times, Outside Magazine, The Atavist, and many, many others.

In this episode we talk about:

The beginning and ending
Sticky notes
The post-book funk
Interviewing
And so much more

Podcast Specific Substack

Pre-order The Front Runner

Promotional Sponsor: The Power of Narrative Conference. Use CNF15 at checkout for a 15% discount.

Newsletter: Rage Against the Algorithm

Show notes: brendanomeara.com

Support: Patreon.com/cnfpod

Episode 458: Jaydra Johnson Had to Get Weird Mar 14, 2025

Show notes

"And then this person said, 'Hey, you know, this needs to be, like, more weird or less weird, but it's in this kind of odd place that isn't working.' And I was like, she's so, right," says Jaydra Johnson, @jaydranicole, and author of Low: Notes on Art & Trash (Fonograf).

Lots of good stuff in this episode. We talk about: