Today, I have the pleasure of interviewing Matt Hongoltz-Hetling.

Matt is a freelance journalist specializing in narrative features and investigative reporting. He has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, has won a George Polk Award, and has been voted Journalist of the Year by the Maine Press association, as well as many other honors.

His work has appeared in varied publications, like USA Today, Popular Science, and the Associated Press, as well as many others. Today we’ll be talking about his nonfiction book: A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear: The Utopian Plot to Liberate an American Town (And Some Bears).

In this episode Matt and I discuss:

• Where he visited to conduct interviews with locals that inspired his book.
• How to build positive relationships in the publishing industry when you are not naturally outgoing.
• What fiction and nonfiction have in common.

Plus, his #1 tip for writers.

About the Author

Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling is a freelance journalist specializing in narrative features and investigative reporting. He has been named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, won a George Polk Award, and been voted Journalist of the Year by the Maine Press association, among numerous other honors. His work has appeared in Foreign Policy, USA Today, Popular Science, Atavist Magazine, Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, the Associated Press, and elsewhere. He lives in New Hampshire.

You can learn more about Matt by visiting his website or following him on Twitter.

A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear: The Utopian Plot to Liberate an American Town (And Some Bears) 

Once upon a time, a group of libertarians got together and hatched the Free Town Project, a plan to take over an American town and completely eliminate its government. In 2004, they set their sights on Grafton, NH, a barely populated settlement with one paved road.

When they descended on Grafton, public funding for pretty much everything shrank: the fire department, the library, the schoolhouse. State and federal laws became meek suggestions, barely heard in the town’s thick wilderness.

The new rules soon caught the attention of Grafton’s neighbors: the bears. Freedom-loving citizens ignored hunting laws and regulations on food disposal. They built a tent city, in an effort to get off the grid. The bears smelled food and opportunity.

A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear is a sometimes funny, sometimes frightening tale of what happens when a government disappears into the woods. Complete with gunplay, adventure, and backstabbing politicians, this is a quintessentially American story, a bearing of our national soul.

If you decide to check out the book, we hope you’ll do so via this Amazon affiliate link, where if you choose to purchase via the link DIY MFA gets a referral fee at no cost to you. As always, thank you for supporting DIY MFA!

Link to Episode 321

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The post Episode 321: From Feature Article to Book: The Art of Storytelling in Nonfiction – Interview with Matt Hongoltz-Hetling appeared first on DIY MFA.