Brian Broome, author of the debut memoir Punch Me Up to the Gods, discusses growing up in rural Ohio, how he was discovered by a literary agent at a storytelling event, how he navigates writing about family, how he approaches structure and revision, and the story in his memoir that made Laura cringe the hardest (that’s a compliment). Broome also answers questions from Page Count listeners surrounding challenges faced by working-class writers and the recent Goodreads review bombing controversy.

Brian Broome is the author of Punch Me Up to the Gods (Mariner Books, 2021), which won the 2021 Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction, Publisher Triangle’s Randy Shilts Award for Nonfiction, and the 2022 Lambda Literary Award in Gay Memoir/Biography. He is K. Leroy Irvis Fellow and instructor in the Writing Program at the University of Pittsburgh. Broome has been a finalist in The Moth storytelling competition and won the grand prize in Carnegie Mellon University’s Martin Luther King Writing Awards. He also won a VANN Award from the Pittsburgh Black Media Federation for journalism in 2019. Broome lives in Pittsburgh.

Page Count is produced by Ohio Center for the Book at Cleveland Public Library and hosted by Laura Maylene Walter. For full show notes and a transcript of this episode, visit the episode page. To get in touch, email [email protected] (put “podcast” in the subject line) or follow us on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook.