"The best part of my second memoir that I'm working on right now ... is right now, when you're actually doing the writing, and so that's a good thing to keep in mind when you're perpetually striving. Getting to do the art is the awesome thing about it," says Courtney Kocak, author of the memoir Girl Gone Wild.

Courtney Kocak is here today and I read her debut memoir Girl Gone Wild over the summer to interview her as part of a debut author panel for Hippocamp. Finally getting around to inviting these jabronis on the show for a little more in depth convos. Courtney is something of a creative swiss army knife. She’s an author, podcaster, comedian, screenwriter, substacker. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times, Slate, HuffPost, and many, many more.

Courtney follows through on shit. She’s produced a bunch of podcasts and currently hosts 3 of her own with over 2 million downloads. That’s like 2 million more than mine, Private Parts Unknown, The Bleeders, and Podcast Bestie. She teaches writing and podcasting for Writing Workshops, Write or Die and Roadmap Writers. You can find her on many socials, but she’s at courtneykocak on IG.

In this episode we talk about:

 * Diffusing the bomb
 * Having perspective vs. the rawness of the moment
 * Using an ethical reader
 * The empathy for her younger self
 * Being like Teflon
 * Arrival fallacy
 * Delusional dreams
 * The best part of the process
 * Getting to do the art
 * Platform as ecosystem and more

I’d pair this episode with Lidia Yuknavitch, Rax King, and Elisa Gabbert, just to name three. Parting shot and why do we even still listen to these things.

Episode 554: Courtney Kocak on Diffusing the Bomb in ‘Girl Gone Wild’

"We hit some roadblocks. We thought when we started working on this story we were going to have a huge amount of material, and then as we moved along, we realized we were working with fragments and with shards, and some people were not going to be available. Some people had died. Some court records that we thought we were going to be able to pull were not available, and so it it was a four year grind really, and so the fact that it was two of us together made it a lot a lot easier," says Alessio Perrone, co-author of The Rise and Fall of a Supercop for The Atavist.

Today we have yet another co-bylined set of dudes, which is really skewing my gender balance of the show, but that’ll all balance out. It’s the third co-bylined set of dudes I’ve had this year, two by the atavist, and it’s Berber Verpoest and Alessio Perrone and they wrote The Rise and Fall of a Supercop for the Atavist. Willy Van Mechelen was one of the most celebrated police officers in Belgian history, responsible for solving infamous kidnappings, robbery and murders. Then Antwerp' s lucrative drug trade came calling.

Breaking bad much? Visit magazine.atavist.com [http://magazine.atavist.com/] to read this thrilling story.

Alessio Perrone is a writer and editor whose work has been published by the Guardian, Time, Slate, and Wired, among others. He’s based in Milan, Italy. Berber Verpoest’s journalism and documentaries have appeared through VRT, Vice, AJ+, NOP 1, and Al Arabiya, among others. He’s based out of Belgium.

Wild story of the super cop who breaks bad.

In this episode we learn:

 * How they worked together on this piece
 * How they find hard to track down people
 * Working together in the cloud
 * And being dogged about getting that crucial interview up to the last moment

Episode 553: Another Atavist Two-Headed Monster! Berber Verpoest and Alessio Perrone

"I always imagine writing is like every thought you have, every idea you have, everything you've learned, every experience you've had regarding a certain subject, it's kind of like a ball of yarn in your mind, and the writing is taking the string and pulling it out straight," says Chuck Klosterman, author of Football and Rock*.

"Wouldn’t you know I recorded yet another LIVE podcast at Gratitude Brewing in Eugene. That’s right, the next day I woke with a CRUSHING hangover, but before that I spoke to Chuck Klosterman over a couple River King IPAs to talk about his two latest books Football and Rock*: An Mainstream Alternative History of Alternative Mainstream Music. It’s published by Da Capo. You’re damn right.

This podcast is going places. It might be going to hell, but it’s going places.

Chuck Klosterman has reached post-interview status in that he doesn’t really need to do these kinds of things, but he does, and I was lucky to get the chance to not only interview him, but to do it in person in front of about 40 frothing Klosterman fans.

Does Chuck Klosterman even need an introduction. I mentioned earlier that he’s post-interview, but he’s also post-website. He’s so popular he doesn’t have to live by the rules of us mortals. I believe he still hangs out on Twitter and you can find his fan page on Facebook.

He’s the author of 14 books that range from novels, to short stories, to essays, to big ideas and little ideas. Some of these titles include I Wear the Black Hat, But What If We’re Wrong? Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, The Nineties: A Book, The Visible Man, Fargo Rock City, Killing Yourself to Live, Football, and his latest, Rock*.

Many of his books are NYT bestsellers. He’s a frequent guest with Bill Simmons on the Bill Simmons Podcast. He was at one time the Ethicist for The New York Times and has written for Esquire, Grantland, and many other places. He became a bit of a star at Spin Magazine in the early aughts, and from there, he boarded a rocket ship and has become one of the most distinct, singular, entertaining voices in culture writing.

In this episode, we talk about:

 * Football and why the violence matters
 * How his brother in law was instrumental in Chuck becoming a professional writer
 * The moment Chuck realized he’d turn out just like his father
 * The struggle of writing a fiction book with real names
 * The moment where I look like a total buffoon
 * Taking the premise of Rock* and applying it to a hypothetical world where Infinite Jest became what Eat, Pray, Love became
 * And a rich Q&A where Chuck riffs on unifying themes in essay collections, a movie cameo, AI, and a few other things

Be sure you’re following the show on IG at creativenonfictionpodcast, or don’t, I don’t care, parting shot on the what does it all mean, but for now, why don’t we queue up the riff and get on with the show? Huh!

Episode 552: Chuck Klosterman is Never Happy

"For me, it's about being a grown up. I think what I projected even at an early age was I've been doing this a while. I plan on doing it for years to come. There's nothing about me that suggests I'm going to scoop up your words and run away and never be heard from again. I'm not leaving town. I'm not leaving the career. You can trust me because it's in my best interest to be trustworthy, too. And then, of course, I listen more than I talk," says Robert Kolker, the bestselling author of The Vanishing Family: Love, Fate, and the Quest to End Dementia.

It’s Robert Kolker, returning to the podcast to talk about his latest book, which is, I have to say, the odds-on favorite to win the 2nd annual CNFy for outstanding achievement in the field of excellence. Last year Cassidy Randall won the wooden plaque. If all awards are ultimately meaningless, I’m happy to contribute. Oh, yeah, you want the book title don’t you? It’s The Vanishing Family: Love, Fate, and the Quest to End Dementia. It’s published by Double Day. I don’t say this as hyperbole: This book is a masterpiece.

Bob is also the author of Hidden Valley Road, a No. 1 NYT bestseller and a selection of Oprah’s Book Club and a top 10 book of the year by the NYT, WaPo, and the fat cats on Wall Street at the Wall Street Journal. The Vanishing Family was one of those “noted books” in The New Yorker. Yeah, it’s THAT good. I’ll give you a little more about Bob in a minute.

Bob Kolker is a writer for the New York Times Magazine and his work has also appeared in the Atavist Magazine, check out his last appearance on Ep. 385. His journalism most often takes the form of gripping, humane narratives. He’s a national magazine award finalist with work appearing in Wired, The Atlantic, Bloomberg Businessweek, Oprah Magazine, and New York magazine. It’s … impressive. Learn more about Bob at robertkolker.com [http://robertkolker.com/] and follow him on IG @bobkolker.

You’re in for a fun ride with this podcast. Among many things, we talk about:

 * The gear he uses
 * Timeline files
 * His crisis of confidence at the start of a story
 * What is the self?
 * The power of timelining
 * His reportorial approach
 * Interviewing chronologically as a means to creating a rough draft
 * Balancing the confidential information of the family in his reporting
 * And a lot more, a LOT more.

Parting shot this week about having an emergency book nearby. I recorded this as a video for the Patreon crew. No b-roll, but I might go in and pretty up my parting shots as vlogs for Patreon and YouTube. Visit Patreon.com/cnfpod [http://patreon.com/cnfpod] to see the first video. Again, no b-roll so it’s just me riffing.

Episode 551: Robert Kolker on Timelining, Confidence, and ‘The Vanishing Family’

"It's all about consistency, and I know that that's the most boring answer on the planet, and the answer I didn't want to hear when I started my Substack three years ago. I just published every single week, trying out different niches, seeing what I could offer value in, until I got exactly where I wanted to land with it," says ghost writer and author Amy Suto.

I got an email out of the blue, wouldn't you know, and it was this writer Amy Suto, who wanted to come on and talk about ghost writing and stuff of that nature. She is very clearly someone who doesn’t need the attention. She’s doing, let’s say, quite well for herself. She has a $250,000+ substack and is the author of the book Write for Money & Power: The Anti-Starving Artists’ Guide to Becoming a SEVEN-figure Writer. I’ll take five figures. Maybe I should read that book.

Amy is a story factory. She’s a ghost writer to many high end folks. She runs online courses through her Substack like Make Substack Your Job, the 6 Week Substack Sprint Workshop, her Substack is her ecosystem and she has mastered it. A little bit more on Amy in a little bit.

Amy Suto is based in San Francisco. She used to be a TV writer but eventually wanted more agency in her writing life. She serializes fiction from her Substack and offers tutorials and classes and a hub for sharing writing opportunities. I’m always a bit weary when you put all your eggs in the basket of a social media platform like Substack but I’m not the guy you want to take money advice from. Look at what I do, then do the opposite. Better yet, look at what Amy does. You can learn more about her at amysuto.com, sutoscience.com, and follow her on Instagram @sutoscience.

In this episode we talk about:

 * TV writing
 * Ghost writing as fly on the wall
 * Inhabiting the client’s voice
 * Memoir touch points
 * Needing to like the client
 * Battling voices
 * Charging what you're worth so you don’t get burned out
 * Branding
 * Conflicting memories
 * Creative boundaries
 * Building a substack to $260,000 revenue
 * Asking the best questions
 * Volume over everything
 * And the great talk by Mark Duplass about the calvary not coming

This episode will pair well with Jan Friedman’s appearance, any of Jen A. Miller’s appearances, as well Jennifer Goforth Gregory.

Episode 550: Ghost Writer Amy Suto and Her Quarter-Million-Dollar Substack

“What I tend to do is, if I write this really difficult explanatory section that is going through a lot of technical information and trying to boil it down, once I'm finished with that, then I get to write this other scene that I really want to write. I think of it as dessert. If I finish my broccoli, I get my ice cream sundae,” says Mark Johnson, author of The Family Plan for The Atavist Magazine.

Hey there CNFers, it’s the creative nonfiction podcast … it’s that Atavistian time of the month and we have a wonderful story written and reported by Mark Johnson, a Pulitzer Prize-winner, for his story "The Family Plan: When a little girl in Iowa was diagnosed with a rare incurable disease, her parents and their community came together to help her. They wound up making medical history.”

I tell you, this podcast nearly didn’t happen. There was an audio glitch that didn’t recorded more than half of the audio portion, but since I record video now to chop and put on social media, I was able to drag the video file into iMovie, decouple the audio from the video, and export the audio. Saved the day. Scary stuff.

First we’re going to hear from EIC Seyward Darby about why some Atavist pitches are thin and what to do about them and what it was about Mark’s story that made it so easy to just slip in and edit the damn thing from the jump.

Mark Johnson, who, as far as I can tell, has little to no internet presence. He might be on LinkedIn. Mark won this little award you might have heard of called the Pulitzer Prize. You hear of this thing? New to me, is it a big deal?

He spent 22 years at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and most recently he was at The Washington Post, but was unfortunately part of its recent mass layoffs. His first novel, Though the Earth Gives Way, came out in 2022.

In this conversation, we talk about:

 * Interview stage fright
 * Interview prep
 * Is it ever OK for a reporter to want to be liked?
 * Things that didn’t work
 * Obsession
 * The stories we wake up with in our heads
 * Writing early in the process
 * “Reward” scenes and what they are
 * The great advice he received from the journalist Rick Bragg
 * Hidden beauties
 * And why these kinds of stories still matter to him

As always, you can support the show by visiting patreon.com/cnfpod and subscribe to Pitch Club on Substack.



Episode 549: Writing Early, Interview Prep, and ‘Reward’ Scenes with Pulitzer Prize—Winner Mark Johnson

It was a few years ago at this point when I came up with the idea of a themed issue of the audio magazine called CODES. I was watching The Mandalorian and these bounty hunters never remove their helmets. They often punctuate an encounter with each other saying, “This is the way.” Staying in the Star Wars world, you could extend the code to Jedis, whose objective is a monk-like devotion to order and justice and a devotion to the Force.

Batman has a code that he never kills. That in the Dark Knight, the Joker teases him about it. Batman, out of necessity, breaks the code in killing Harvey Dent to save Jim Gordon’s son.

I admire people with singular devotion because I am someone who is so lacking in singular devotion. I say I want something and yet my habits rarely align with that thing I purport to want. That’s why the people I tend to write about are obsessive and they give things up because the real sacrifice is not seeing their goals through, NOT giving up a night on the town, NOT giving drinking the weekend away, NOT eating multiple pizzas. I could go on.

So it was with that in mind that I wanted to get a sense of the codes people live by.

We have six essays in this issue. It features Sam Sharp, Lindsay Street, Jennifer Lang, Marilyn Wimp Paolino, Judith Evans, and Eren Simpson.

Follow along with the show @creativenonfictionpodcast and consider becoming a patron over at patreon.com/cnfpod. Those contributions helped pay these writers for their work.

Issue 4: Codes

"In terms of the research, I can get lost in detective mode. Sometimes it's good if I know, okay, I only have an hour. I'm going to see what what can I learn about this one person in an hour. Then take it in those little pieces, and when I have time, I can get some writing done," says Elizabeth Chamblee Burch, author of The Pain Brokers.

Today we have Elizabeth Chamblee Burch, a professor at the University of Georgia School of Law and the debut author of The Pain Brokers: How Con Men, Call Centers, and Rogue Doctors Fuel America’s Lawsuit Factory. It’s published by Atria/One Signal Publishers.

It’s a story of greed, fear, and exploitation of a scam that targeted women who had potentially faulty pelvic mesh surgery, only to have a shady network of cons terrify these women, over the phone, with vast amounts of personal information, scaring them to have this mesh removed that effectively has ruined the lives of countless women. The Pain Brokers chronicles their plight, as well as the lawyers who sought justice and the predatory people at the spearhead of this scheme.

So Elizabeth’s focus of her teaching is in mass torts, class actions, and civil procedure. She’s been a visiting professor at Harvard Law School and won the American Law Institute's Early Career Scholars Meal in 2015, among a few other saucy awards. Her academic work and commentary have appeared in The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today and the Miami Herald, just to name a few. You can find her online at elizabethchambleeburch.com [http://elizabethchambleeburch.com/] or on the socials, like @elizabethcburch on IG.

The Pain Brokers was named was of the best books so far of 2026 by The New Yorker and in this episode we talk about:

 * Making law interesting
 * Goat chokers
 * Locking in character to an idea
 * Structure Part 1 seven different times
 * How intimidating it all was
 * Getting IRL
 * The value we had as journalists
 * Getting lost in detective mode
 * What the hell are mass torts?
 * Mass tort du jours
 * The granular details and how to get them
 * Knowing where the landmines are
 * And what keeps her coming back

Pair this episode with Ep. 443 with Jared Sullivan



Episode 548: It’s Easy for Elizabeth Chamblee Burch to Get Lost in Detective Mode

"I had a really interesting conversation with a publisher for my first book, and the publisher asked me, 'How are you going to get out of the story?' And I think that's the thing that people often go into it having a  great idea of two thirds of a really good story, how it goes up through the climactic action of your narrative. But then there can be this like long trail off where people can't bring themselves to wrap the story up, or not put as much thought into exactly how the story ends," says Catherine Grace Katz, author of Shadow Before the Flame.

It’s Catherine Grace Katz (@catherinegracekatz on IG)! Who first appeared on the show back on Ep. 222 for her acclaimed book Daughters of Yalta and she’s back in the saddle again for Shadow Before the Flame: The Hindenburg Disaster and the Prelude to War. It’s published by Viking.

Two things are ubiquitous about the Hindenburg: It blew up and the journalist painting the audio picture of the disaster said, “Oh, the humanity.” Beyond that, what else is there? Turns out, um, quite a f------ lot, man. I didn’t know there were survivors. I didn’t know it was a passenger vessel. Shadow will sit right beside the great historical yarns spun by the likes of Laura Hillenbrand, Erik Larson, and Hampton Sides. I’m always amazed how writers make work of this nature suspenseful when you know the outcome. Like, you know the Hindenburg blows up. You know Trudy Ederle swims the English Channel. And yet, when it happens, you’re rewarded more than you could have imagined.

What a fun time we had. Can’t believe it’s been six years since she was on the show. Oct. 2, 2020. Wild. Who’d have thought that she’s such a fiery New York Yankees fan? Hmmm … In this episode we talk about:

 * The origin story of this book
 * The post-book funk
 * Step 1 of writing this book proposal
 * Getting out of the story
 * World building
 * Capturing the little nuggets
 * How she’s more rooted in feel
 * The murder wall
 * Cutting yourself off from the research
 * The tech of zeppelins
 * Why they couldn’t use helium
 * The echoes of history
 * Not writing the present into the book
 * The one thing she’s totally inflexible about
 * The biggest change between book one and book two
 * And her hottest of hot takes

Pair this episode with Ep. 132 with Laura Hillenbrand, Ep. 473 with Hampton Sides, and Ep. 368 with Tyler Hooper.

Episode 547: Catherine Grace Katz Needs a Portable Murder Wall and PB&J to Write

"Writing is such a lonely job, and I feel bad for people who don't have a crew. I think you really have to have a crew. I had a college crew my first couple years at ESPN. There was a bunch of us who were young writers and very ambitious. That was a crew. And then we have our group now of people who are on various text threads, you need a band to always know where your head is at any given time, so they can help you tap into those things when you're doing your work," says Seth Wickersham, author of three books, including his anthology of his best ESPN work Be On That Hill.

Today we welcome back Seth Wickersham, his third trip to the podcast. He has achieved anthology status. His best work over 26 years at ESPN is in 480 tidy pages titled Be On That Hill: Stories from the Summits of Sport, with a forward by his buddy and colleague and master in his own right, Wright Thompson. It’s published by Hyperion Avenue.

I should add right off the top that I should have in the coming week or two a Nieman Storyboard annotation of Seth’s mammoth profile on Sean Payton. It’s a 15,000-word feature that is a stunning piece of work. In any case, pay attention to this space for news on that.

But, yes, Seth is the author It’s Better to Be Feared and American Kings and let me be the one to tell you that he is one of the good ones, just a great person on top of being a tremendous writer and reporter. I think that comes across in how he speaks, his generosity of spirit and willingness to share his vast experience with you. I mean, take these blurbs for instance: from Jonthan Eig: "Wickersham stands with Plimpton and Halberstam among the finest sports chroniclers." And Peter King: "Wickersham’s terrific prose and storytelling are buttressed by his tireless and insightful reporting.”

Damn.

What a treat, what a ride you’re in for. Seth’s work can be found at espn.com [http://espn.com/] and you can visit his website sethwickersham.com [http://sethwickersham.com/] and follow him on IG @seth.wickersham. In this episode, we talk about:

 * Getting beyond access porn for his Payton profile
 * Having an idea of where you want to end a story
 * The messy creative process
 * Each time you’re starting over
 * Shades of grayness
 * Not being dissuaded by lack of access
 * Lucky that people were invested in his success
 * Breaking through creative plateaus
 * The benefit of being a young writer
 * Everything in a story is a reflection of you
 * Needing a crew
 * How your writing voice can adapt
 * And the notes he has taped to his computer

You might want to pair this episode with Pamela Colloff, Tony Rehagen and Justin Heckert.

Episode 546: Seth Wickersham is On That Hill

Brendan O'Meara (@brendanomeara) · Zencastr

Brendan O'Meara (@brendanomeara)

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!