Brendan O'Meara w/ Maggie Mertens, THE FRONT RUNNER

Essayist, sports writer, and host of the Creative Nonfiction podcast Brendan O'Meara visits the store to discuss his new book, The Front Runner: The Life of Steve Prefontaine, an essential reappraisal of his life and legacy, a powerful work of narrative history exploring the forces and psychology that made the American Track and Field icon great and separating the man from the myths, 50 years after his tragic death in a car crash. O'Meara is joined in conversation by Maggie Mertens, author of Better Faster Farther: How Running Changed Everything We Know About Women.

On the 50th anniversary of American Track and Field icon Steve Prefontaine’s tragic death comes an essential reappraisal of his life and legacy, a powerful work of narrative history exploring the forces and psychology that made Prefontaine great and separating the man from the myths.

In the fifty years since his tragic death in a car crash, Steve Prefontaine has towered over American distance running. One of the most recognizable and charismatic figures to ever run competitively in the United States, Prefontaine has endured as a source of inspiration and fascination—a talent who presaged the American running boom of the late 1970s and helped put Nike on the map as the brand’s first celebrity-athlete face.

Now on the anniversary of his untimely death, author Brendan O’Meara, host of the Creative Nonfiction podcast, offers a fresh, definitive retelling of Prefontaine’s life, revisiting one of the most enigmatic figures in American sports with a twenty-first-century lens. Through dozens of original interviews with family, friends, teammates, and competitors, this long-overdue reappraisal of Prefontaine—the first such exhaustive treatment in almost thirty years—provides never-before-told stories about the unique talent, innovative mental strength, and personal struggles that shaped Prefontaine on and off the track. Bringing new depth to an athlete long eclipsed by his brash, aggressive running style and the heartbreak of his death at twenty-four, O’Meara finds the man inside the myth, scrutinizing a legacy that has shaped American sports culture for decades.

What emerges is a singular portrait of a distinctly American talent, a story written in the pines and firs of the Pacific Northwest back when running was more blue-collar love than corporate pursuit—the story of a runner whose short life casts a long, fast shadow.

Brendan O'Meara is the founder and host of the Creative Nonfiction Podcast, the show where he speaks to writers about the art and craft of telling true stories. He's an award-winning sports writer and features writer whose work has appeared in Trail Runner Magazine, Writer's Digest, Lit Hub, Creative Nonfiction magazine, Longreads, Bleacher Report. Along with The Front Runner, he's also the author of Six Weeks in Saratoga: How Three-Year-Old Filly Rachel Alexandra Beat the Boys and Became Horse of the Year. You can learn more about Brendan at brendanomeara.com or subscribe to his two monthly newsletters: Rage Against the Algorithm for a dispatch links and ephemera to lead a more intentional online life and Pitch Club where he invites a narrative journalist to share a cold pitch and has them audio annotate it. You can follow him on social media @creativenonfictionpodcast on Instagram or @brendanomeara.bsky.social on Bluesky.

Maggie Mertens is a journalist who covers gender, culture, and sports. Her essays and reporting have appeared in The Atlantic, Sports Illustrated, espnW, VICE, Glamour, The Guardian, Refinery29, and Creative Nonfiction, among others. Her work has also appeared in The Year’s Best Sports Writing 2021, and Women and Sports in the United States. She is a graduate of Smith College and The New School. She lives in Seattle with her husband and two children.

Pre-order your copy of The Front Runner here.

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