Reality Radio: Telling True Stories in Sound (Documentary Arts and Culture, Published in association with the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0807833576 ISBN 13: 9780807833575

Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press, 2010

Synopsis

Over the last few decades, the radio documentary has developed into a strikingly vibrant form of creative expression. Millions of listeners hear arresting, intimate storytelling from an ever-widening array of producers on programs including This American Life, StoryCorps, and Radio Lab; online through such sites as Transom, the Public Radio Exchange, Hearing Voices, and Soundprint; and through a growing collection of podcasts.

Reality Radio celebrates today’s best audio documentary work by bringing together some of the most influential and innovative practitioners from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia. In these nineteen essays, documentary artists tell ― and demonstrate, through stories and transcripts ― how they make radio the way they do, and why.

Whether the contributors to the volume call themselves journalists, storytellers, even audio artists ― and although their essays are just as diverse in content and approach ― all use sound to tell true stories, artfully.

Contributors:
Jad Abumrad
Jay Allison
damali ayo
John Biewen
Emily Botein
Chris Brookes
Scott Carrier
Katie Davis
Sherre DeLys
Lena Eckert-Erdheim
Ira Glass
Alan Hall
Natalie Kestecher
The Kitchen Sisters
Maria Martin
Karen Michel
Rick Moody
Joe Richman
Dmae Roberts
Stephen Smith
Sandy Tolan

About this title

About the Authors

John Biewen is audio program director at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, where he teaches and produces documentary work for NPR, PRI, American Public Media, and other public radio audiences.

Alexa Dilworth is publishing director at the Center for Documentary Studies.

From the Back Cover

Over the last few decades, the radio documentary has developed into a strikingly vibrant form of creative expression. This volume celebrates today's best audio documentary work by bringing together some of the most influential and innovative practitioners from the U.S., Canada, the U.K., and Australia. In these 19 essays, documentary makers tell relate how they make radio the way they do, and why.
Includes essays from Ira Glass, the Kitchen Sisters, Rick Moody, and producer Joe Richman, among others.

Reviews

Radio has suffered corporate deadening just like other “traditional” media, yet it retains an edge thanks to public, community, and college stations and the popularity of radio documentaries. Biewen, audio program director for Duke University’s Center for Documentary Studies, offers a lively history of creative documentary radio in his introduction to 19 passionate, instructive, and unexpectedly moving essays by innovative audio journalists and artists who “use sound to tell true stories artfully.” Such artists include the Kitchen Sisters, who write about their “deep need to bear witness and try to heal the culture through stories and revelations,” and Ira Glass, who generously reveals just how much patience, effort, and luck are involved in creating This American Life. Jad Abumrad’s description of his work with Robert Krulwich on the wacky Radio Lab series is matched by provocative accounts of radio diaries and bold audio performance art and Katie Davis’ beautiful essay about her collaborations with Washington, D.C., teens in Neighborhood Stories and the practice of “deeper listening.” Invaluable and many-faceted coverage of a thriving, populist, and mind-expanding art form. --Donna Seaman

Edition details

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0807833576
• ISBN 13: 9780807833575
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 224
• Editor: Biewen John, Dilworth Alexa