Writing Non-Fiction and Memoir With Award-Winning Author Frye Gaillard

In this episode 392, we focus on writing non-fiction and memoir. Our featured guest with extensive experience in this field is Frye Gaillard, an award-winning author who has written more than thirty books, ranging across the genres of history, memoir, journalism, and historical stories for young readers. In addition to discussing the mechanics of this kind of writing, Frye shares his work, “Live As If… A Teacher’s Love Story,” a remembrance of his late wife, Dr. Nancy Gaillard, who died of leukemia in 2018.

A version of this recording was released on our exclusive Patreon channel. We thank our Patrons for making it possible for us to release this updated version on the regular podcast.

Also listen to the Author’s Earlier Podcast Episode:

You can listen here: https://charlottereaderspodcast.com/frye-gaillard-explores-social-and-political-movements-of-the-1960s-in-a-hard-rain/

In this August 3, 2021 episode with Frye Gaillard, we discussed a “A Hard Rain: America in the 1960’s, Our Decade of Hope, Possibility, and Innocence Lost,” a reconstruction and remembrance of the transcendent era of the 1960’s.

Author bio:

Frye Gaillard, a native of Mobile, Alabama, began his career as a writer and journalist after coming of age during the turbulent events of the 1960s, when he witnessed the Birmingham arrest of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and acted as student host for Sen. Robert Kennedy at Vanderbilt University. In the years since then, he has written more than thirty books, ranging across the genres of history, memoir, journalism, and historical stories for young readers.

His award winning titles include A Hard Rain: America in the 1960s; Cradle of Freedom: Alabama and the Movement That Changed America; Watermelon Wine: The Spirit of Country Music; The Dream Long Deferred: The Landmark Struggle for Desegregation in Charlotte, North Carolina; and Go South to Freedom, a novel for middle grade readers.

Hard Rain: America in the 1960s was an NPR Great Read of 2018 & winner of F. Scott Fitzgerald Museum Literary Prize and the Alabama Authors Award.

His most recent titles include The Southernization of America: A Story of Democracy in the Balance, coauthored with Pulitzer Prize winner Cynthia Tucker; and Live As If… A Teacher’s Love Story, a remembrance of his late wife, Dr. Nancy Gaillard, who died of leukemia in 2018.

Author Website: https://fryegaillardauthor.com

Show discussion highlights:

  • How to do non-fiction well
  • Plumbing the possibilities of the literal truth
  • Frye’s mechanics of writing non-fiction
  • Using point of view in non-fiction
  • Combining memoir with biography
  • Writing about his late wife in “Live As If: A Teacher’s Love Story”
  • A reading from “Live As If: A Teacher’s Love Story”
  • How to outline a long work of non-fiction

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