The 2018 Sarah Awards are now open! The deadline is February 15, 2018 for you to submit your work to be considered to win. 2018 Sarah Awards winners will receive cash prizes and join us at our for our 2018 ceremony at The Players Club in New York City on Shakespeare's birthday!
Click here to learn more about the rules and how to submit.
It is an exciting time for audio. The tumultuous growth of podcasting and the concomitant development of digital channels, multiple platforms, and user-driven content has not only expanded and re-energized the form, but forced public radio to loosen its stays and let down its hair.
Where once we might have talked of “the system” or “the industry,” we can now confidently say we are part of “a culture.” But—we are missing two important components of a vital culture: a critical language, and with it, a critical practice. The language should be expressly designed to describe our forms, tropes, and themes, but with reference to the larger culture and world of ideas. And the practice should be constant, robust, and open, with critical tools wielded to help us better understand our work, and ourselves, and to help our public to better understand us as artists.
1. For those who are unfamiliar with your background, you have done everything from manage a literary magazine (McSweeney’s) to write and design a digital novel (The Silent History). Your work is innovative and experimental, often pushing the boundaries of a particular genre or medium. In that sense, it is perhaps not surprising that you’re experimenting with podcasting, but I was curious about your decision to work specifically within this medium. What drew you to podcasting and why did you feel it was the right fit for a project like Homecoming?
Why improvise audio fiction? Why not just sit down and write an ordinary script? In the radio of our times, whether documentary or fiction, we often search for methods to sound "as ourselves." If we want to reach out to listeners today, it is central to create what the critics of podcasting sometimes refer to as ”babble” or ”waffle.” Babble is the sound of the authentic, as if everything we say is invented spontaneously in the moment. One tool to achieve this is improvisation, and in this essay I will describe how we worked with improv in the podcast series The Dinner Party (2016) at Swedish Radio Drama.
"Will people be able to tell what is fact and what is fantasy?"
"Why do we need fiction in our radio show?"
"Won't listeners revolt?"
In this episode of Serendipity, we play 5 of the 10 finalists for our 2016 Very, Very, Short, Short Stories Contest. Featuring: "Bitterly Cold" by David Garland, "The Staging Area" by Jason Gots, "Noir" by Pa Ying Vang, "#blessed" by Jackie Heltz, and "Blinking" by La Cosa Preziosa. Read More
We’re excited to bring back the 2020 Sarah Awards with this talented trio of audio fiction judges. Read More
James Urbaniak is the kind of podcaster that other producers love to hate. His show, Getting On with James Urbaniak, consists of nothing but a single voice reading a fictional soliloquy, often written by someone else. There is almost no elaborate soundscaping, no intricate plot development, little evidence of endless editing sessions to get the thing just right. Getting On sounds like Urbaniak cruised into the studio, an iced latte in hand, and finished recording before his drink grew tepid. None of this would be infuriating if the podcast in question wasn’t so good. Read More
