The Creative Nonfiction Podcast with Brendan O'Meara

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 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 schizophrenia.” It’s a piece that that Mia, as Mary Margaret goes by, pitched more than a year ago and it was rejected. But Mia went back to the drawing board, basically wrote the entire thing, came back, and boom here we are.We’re going to hear from Seyward Darby about her side of the table and why this piece was at first rejected and that special feeling when a great pitch comes across the transom.Mary Margaret Alvarado is a multi-faceted writer with her poetry and nonfiction appearing in The Iowa Review, The Kenyon Review, VQR, Outside, and The Georgia Review, among other publications. She is the author of the poetry collection Hey Folly and the nonfiction chapbook American Weather. She lives in Colorado.In our chat we talk about: Dogged obsessiveness Cold drafts Ambition Trust Reimagining the MFA And stocking producePromotional support: The 2026 Power of Narrative Conference. Use narrative20 at checkout for 20% off your tuition. Visit combeyond.bu.edu.Order The Front RunnerWelcome to Pitch ClubShow notes: brendanomeara.com

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 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 Harmony. It’s a book whose ancestor is very clearly Eat, Pray, Love. A story of the cost of achievement and ambition, how childhood trauma permeates deep into adulthood, and the long nonlinear road to healing. Jane, being the entrepreneur she is, has quite the ecosystem around her memoir. At her website, there’s a self-worth quiz. I don’t feel like failing, so I’m not gonna take it. If I can’t copy off the smart kid, then why take the test, am I right? She does speaking and leadership coaching, workshops on building resilience, and she recently delivered a TED talk about resilience.Jane is the former CEO and co-founder of Embrace Global, which developed infant incubators that helped more than 1,000,000 babies, many of which would have died without this technology. She was recognized as Forbes Impact 30 and receive the Economist Innovation Award, Fast Company Innovation Award, and the World Economic Forum Social Entrepreneur of the Year Award. She has an MBA from Stanford and a Masters in Public Administration from Harvard. Didn’t I just have some clown on the show who studied at Yale and Harvard. What the fuck am I doing? If I don’t feel inadequate, I don’t feel alive, man.You can learn more about Jane at janemariechen.com and follow her, let’s just say on the gram, at janemarie.chen.In this podcast, we talk about: How she wrote the book to help people The importance of surfing in her life What’s enough? Burnout Writing the visceral Zooming in and Zooming out Playing with timelines Working with a collaborative writer Writing to leave the past in the past And not wanting to write a prescriptive memoirSome pretty rich shit, man, parting shot on, shit if I know, so let’s queue up the montage. Here’s Jane Marie Chen, huh!Order The Front RunnerWelcome to Pitch ClubShow notes: brendanomeara.com

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 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 Artists (Simon & Schuster).Daniel Pollack-Pelzner, the Notorius DPP, is charismatic as he is brilliant. Maybe some of that seasoning rubbed off on me. One can dream. He teaches English and theater at Portland State University. He received the Graves Award from the American Council of Learned Societies for outstanding teaching in the humanities. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, the Atlantic and the New York Times.Wanna know how sickening Daniel is? He has a BA in history from Yale and a PhD in English from Harvard. Gross. Ew, right? Ew. You can learn more about Daniel’s disgusting intelligence and equally freaky contributions to the culture at danielpollackpelzner.com and follow him on IG at danielpollackpelzner.This conversation was so lively and great and we talk about: How he pitched Lin-Manuel Miranda on being his biographer Being driven by curiosity Having to earn scenes The “fun of it” framing Balancing salt, acid, fat, and heat Maintaining a sense of play with the work What Daniel learned from Lin-Manuel And taking the harsh feedback from trusted readersOrder The Front RunnerWelcome to Pitch ClubShow notes: brendanomeara.com

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 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 Paul Robeson in America.We’ve got Howard Bryant (@howardbryantbooks) back on the show for Ep. 509. Howard is the best-selling author of several books and his latest is Kings and Pawns: Jackie Robinson and Paul Robeson in America. It’s published by Mariner Books.Howard’s book takes a new framing on two iconic Black American icons of the 20th century. Very few people know much about Paul Robeson, who was a brilliant football player, but perhaps more famous as a baritone singer and stage actor. Jackie Robinson was the first Black American to play major league baseball, breaking the color barrier in baseball.The two were separated by some twenty years, never met in person, but were pitted against each other during the second Red Scare, kings turned into pawns. The authoritarian, McCarythian overreach of the era very much echoes our current moment. Robeson’s career, his life, was ruined. It’s a complicated story brilliantly orchestrated by one of the best writers this country has on offer.Howard is the author of The Last Hero: A Life of Henry Aaron, Juicing the Game: Drugs, Power, and the Fight for the Soul of Major League Baseball, Rickey: The Life and Legend of an American Original, The Heritage: Black Athletes, A Divided America, and the Politics of Patriotism, and Full Dissidence: Notes from an Uneven Playing Field, and he also was the guest editor of The Best American Sports Writing Series. You’re in for a treat. You can learn more about Howard at howardbryant.net and follow him on IG @howardbryantbooks.In this episode we talk about: When you know it’s a book Who are your stars? How he reshaped the book by fixing the introduction How he bridged the gap between Robinson and Robeson’s timelines How Branch Rickey, this vaunted angle of integration, wasn’t exactly so holy And Howard’s favorite thing about writingOrder The Front RunnerWelcome to Pitch ClubShow notes: brendanomeara.com

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,' 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 of Pro Wrestling Glory (Norton).Who is our guest this week? It would appear to be Alison Lyn Miller (@alisonlynmiller on IG), author of Rough House: A Father, a Son and the Pursuit of Pro Wrestling Glory. It’s published by Norton.This is a great book and it’s an immersive story in an oddball subculture of amateur professional wrestling. It follows Hunter James, a young man who eschewed the traditional path, the path his father wanted for him, to pursue this dream of becoming the next superstar of the WWE. You’re gonna think I’m crazy, but this book has so many parallels to being a writer. The luck you need, the timing you need, the skill you need, the perseverance you need, the envy they feel, the subjectivity, voice, style, individuality. But we writers rarely need the abs. But don’t we all want the abs.So Alison is a freelance journalist based out of Georgia, which put her in direct overlap with this subculture of “backyarders,” these aspirational wrestlers and hobby wrestlers. It’s easy to poke fun at wrestling as fake. Well, it isn’t fake, so much as it’s scripted brutality. It’s danger adjacent, though there’s always physical risk when jumping, flipping, and kicking. Alison witnessed it all and delivers a heartfelt tale of ambition and striving, of a blind belief in the self.In this conversation, we talk about: Not being able to throw everything in the book Being motivated by slights Finding the narrative arc The year it took Alison to write her proposal How wrestling mirrors humanity Making the writing approachable And maybe we should all be play fighting in our underwearOrder The Front RunnerNewsletter: Rage Against the AlgorithmWelcome to Pitch ClubShow notes: brendanomeara.com