Gretchen Cherington on Investigating Toward Deeper Truths
From the Write-minded Podcast, Hosted by Brooke Warner and Grant Faulkner
Write-minded: Weekly Inspiration for Writers is currently in its fourth year. We are a weekly podcast for writers craving a unique blend of inspiration and real talk about the ups and downs of the writing life. Hosted by Brooke Warner of She Writes and Grant Faulkner of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), each theme-focused episode of Write-minded features an interview with a writer, author, or publishing industry professional.
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This week’s episode covers the importance of investigation and research in works of family and personal histories and memoirs. Guest Gretchen Cherington shares the many ways she researched her latest family memoir, The Butcher, The Embezzler, and the Fall Guy, through first-person narratives, interviews, and countless documents and letters. Hers is a book that attempts not so much to solve a crime as to understand the powerful men at the center of a scandal, making for a reich interview about men and power, the legacy our families leave us, and how writing can help us see varying perspectives as we uncover complicated truths.
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Gretchen Cherington is the daughter of Pulitzer Prize-winning US poet laureate Richard Eberhart. She grew up in a home filled with literary icons like Robert Frost, Anne Sexton, James Dickey—a life captured in her award-winning first memoir, Poetic License. For years, Cherington made her career advising CEOs around how to transform their companies into places where both business and people could thrive. Cherington’s writing has appeared in The Huffington Post, Lit Hub, Electric Lit, Hippocampus, Quartz, and elsewhere, and she was nominated for a 2012 Pushcart Prize. Her latest book is The Butcher, The Embezzler, and the Fall Guy.
