Steven Kurutz, a features reporter for the New York Times, where he writes about style, culture and design. Kurutz wrote the piece “Fruitland” for Creative Nonfiction magazine’s new series, True Story. The story expands upon a piece he wrote for the New York Times in 2012 headlined “A Time Capsule Set to Song.” That story was about two brothers who put out a record in the 1970s, but didn’t receive fanfare for three decades. 

Prior to joining the New York Times, Kurutz was a staff writer at the Wall Street Journal and Details. He is the author of “Like a Rolling Stone: The Strange Life of a Tribute Band,” which was published by Random House, and which the New York Times called “heartfelt and often hilarious.” 

Also joining the podcast on this episode is Hattie Fletcher. Fletcher is the managing editor of Creative Nonfiction, and is editing each installment of True Story. The new series publishes one big work of creative nonfiction every month in a mini-magazine. It started in October with Kurutz’s Fruitland.

Fletcher edited a virtual round-table discussion that I conducted with Chris Jones, Ben Montgomery and Thomas Lake in 2012 on journalism as creative writing. That discussion ran in the Winter 2013 issue of Creative Nonfiction, and ultimately inspired this podcast.

Episode 48: Steven Kurutz & True Story

Ben Montgomery is the author of “The Man Who Walked Backward: An American Dreamer’s Search For Meaning in the Great Depression.” The book was published by Little, Brown Spark in September, and tells the story of a man named Plennie Wingo, who in 1931, attempted to walk around the world, backward.

This is the third time Montgomery has been on the podcast. He was the guest on Episode 21, when he talked about his first book, “Grandma Gatewood’s Walk: The Inspiring Story of the Woman Who Saved the Appalachian Trail.” That book went on to become a New York Times Bestseller.

He was also one of five guests on Episode 45, which was focused on the work of the late Michael Brick, which was contained in the book, “Everyone Leaves Behind a Name.” The other guests on that show were Wright Thompson, Michael Kruse, Tony Rehagen, and Thomas Lake. 

Montgomery created the website gangrey.com, which was the namesake for this podcast. For years, he was one of the top enterprise reporters at the Tampa Bay Times, where he wrote about everything from the last spectacle lynching in Florida to why cops shoot at suspects. 

He left the Tampa Bay Times in October 2017 to focus on writing “The Man Who Walked Backward.” Now, he finds himself teaching student journalists at the University of Montana as the T. Anthony Pollner Distinguished Visiting Professor. 

Montgomery’s latest book is his third. His second book was titled The Leper Spy: The Story of an Unlikely Hero of World War II. 


He was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Local Reporting in 2010 for his series of stories on the decades of abuse at a Florida reform school for boys. He won the Dart Award and Casey Medal for the same series.

Episode 67: Ben Montgomery

Gangrey: The Podcast focuses on narrative journalism and the reporters who write it.

Episode 48: Steven Kurutz & True Story

gangreypodcast

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