First Draft Episode #184: Rhett Miller

Rhett Miller (find him on Twitter and Instagram), musician and writer, is a solo artist as well as lead singer of The Old 97s. His first book for children, No More Poems: A Book in Verse That Just Gets Worse, illustrated by Dan Santat (listen to his First Draft episode here).

Links and Topics Mentioned In This Episode

• The Fault in Our Stars by John Green being one of the books Rhett has read with his kids as a way to talk about difficult subjects, head-on

• How being inspired by writers like Raymond Carver led to a disagreement with his creative writing teacher at Sarah Lawrence
• “The Messenger,” Rhett’s most recent solo album
• “My Generation,” the song where The Who famously said they’d rather die than get old
• Willie Nelson, patron saint of Americana music
• Rhett’s buddy Mickey Raphael, harmonica player for Willie Nelson
• Other artists giving Americana a moment: Jason Isbell; Chris Stapleton; and Brandi Carlile
• “We Could Have Been the Cowboys,” Rhett’s article for Sports Illustrated
• Rhett wrote a paper about Gustav Klimpt for his then-girlfriend, who was getting a graduate degree in art history
• John Dickson Carr, an early whodunit writer, the inventor of the “locked room” drama
• Ben Acker (listen to his First Draft podcast here), who introduced Rhett to First Draft and, thereby, the illustrator of No More Poems, Dan Santat (listen to his First Draft podcast here)
• Megan Tingley, editor at Little, Brown
• e e cummings, the poet who inspired Rhett’s dedication to non-punctuation

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Every Tuesday, I speak to storytellers like Veronica Roth, author of Divergent, Michael Dante  DiMartino, co-creator of Avatar: The Last Airbender, or John August, screenwriter of Big Fish, Charlie’s Angels, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Together, we take deep dives on their careers and creative works.

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