The Creative Nonfiction Podcast with Brendan O'Meara Episode 513: Cutting the Toothbrush in Half with Melanie D.G. Kaplan
"I wanted to keep reporting, and I'm like, it's not ready yet. And [a friend] reminded me over and over that this is a sales pitch. It's a proposal. The agents and publishers just want to know you can put a story together and tell a story that's longer than 2,000 words, and that there's some narrative arc to it," says Melanie D.G. Kaplan, author of Lab Dog: A Beagle and His Human Investigate the Surprising World of Animal Research (Hachette).
Today we have Melanie DG Kaplan, author of Lab Dog. Not gonna lie, if you’re an animal lover and a believer in animal rights, it’s a tough read. I don’t mean it’s a bad book, it’s a very good book, it’s just … tough. Brought no fewer than 88 tears to my eyes at various points. The late Jane Goodall called it “remarkable.” So, there you go.
Melanie is a journalist, an author, and when she’s feeling brave an ukulele player. Her work has appeared in the Atlantic, the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, among many, many others. She interviewed Miss Piggy. How many people can say that? Lab Dog is her first book and it chronicles her and her rescue beagle Hammy as they illuminate the world of animal testing and thus the testing that Hammy was subjected to for the first few years of his life. They find out where he was born, where he was subjected to various cruelties and indignities all in the name of science and progress. Her book details the advances in technologies and models that are proving to be just as effective as animal testing without the torture.
In this conversation we also hit on:
- The dialogue between the animal research world and the animal activist world
- Changing her physical environment so she can focus and write
- Overcoming not being a “name” in this business
- Book proposal craft
- And the power of tech shabbat and how she turned me on to the “Light Phone”
Show notes: brendanomeara.com