The Creative Nonfiction Podcast with Brendan O'Meara Podcast
1) Episode 513: Cutting the Toothbrush in Half with Melanie D.G. Kaplan
"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...Show More
2) Episode 512: Mary Margaret Alvarado Likes Her Drafts Ice Cold
"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 i...Show More
3) Episode 511: Writing to Leave the Past in the Past with Jane Marie Chen
"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 eve...Show More
4) Episode 510: Daniel Pollack-Pelzner's Doesn't Waste His Shot in Lin-Manuel Miranda Biography
"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 L...Show More
5) Episode 509: Howard Bryant Masterfully Braids History in 'Kings and Pawns'
"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 essen...Show More
6) Episode 508: Motivated by Slights and Play Fighting in Our Underwear with Alison Lyn Miller
"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,...Show More
7) Episode 507: 'Enshittification' Author Cory Doctorow Believes in a New, Good Internet
"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...Show More
8) Episode 506: Alexandra Marvar and the Trough of Despair, the Wall of Regret
"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 yo...Show More
9) Episode 505: Leah Sottile and Ryan Haas Talk 'Hush', Investigative Reporting, and Breaking New Trail in Their Careers
"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 docum...Show More
10) Episode 504: Seth Wickersham and the Macbethian Tragedy of the American Quarterback
"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 su...Show More
Episode 504: Seth Wickersham and the Macbethian Tragedy of the American Quarterback
41:14 | Dec 19th, 2025