Third Coast International Audio Festival :: ABOUT TCIAF

Third Coast Festival
Navy Pier
848 East Grand
Chicago, Illinois
60611-3509

312-948-4682
info@thirdcoastfestival.org

Johanna Zorn

Johanna Zorn, executive director and founder of the Third Coast Festival, has been committed to the development of contemporary audio culture for nearly three decades. Primarily in conjunction with Chicago Public Radio, she has produced a wide variety of acclaimed programs including Airplay, a newsmagazine for teenagers, and Studio A, a general interest daily talkshow. In the 1990’s, she became the executive producer of Chicago Matters, an award-winning annual public affairs series exploring topics of vital concern to the greater Chicago community. In 2009, she led efforts to transform the TCF into an independent media arts organization.

Julie Shapiro

Third Coast Artistic Director Julie Shapiro has been with the project since its inception in 2000. In previous lives, she worked at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, helped launch an experimental music/film festival, Transmissions, and produced Storylines Southeast - a survey of seminal literature from the American South. Shapiro has shared her radio perspectives at conferences and with publications around the world. She keeps a blog about the art of listening, and occasionally produces stories for the public radio airwaves.

Katie Mingle

Katie Mingle joined the Third Coast Festival staff in June, 2010. She produces Re:sound, hosts the Third Coast Podcast, and develops features for the website. We first noticed her in 2007 when she won our Best New Artist Award for The Dead Can’t Do You Nothin’. Before getting into radio, Katie painted houses and hung out on porches in the great state of North Carolina, where she says, "half of her heart still lives". Previous to joining the Third Coast staff, Katie taught audio editing and documentary skills to high school students and produced her own work, much of which has aired on Re:sound. To hear her work, check out her website.

Gwen Macsai

Gwen Macsai is host of Re:sound, the Third Coast Festival's weekly program on WBEZ-FM. An award-winning writer, producer and humorist, Macsai’s radio work has aired on All Things Considered, Morning Edition, and Weekend Edition Saturday. She’s also the creator of the television sitcom What About Joan starring Joan Cusack, and author of Lipshtick, a book of humorous first-person essays.

Maya Goldberg-Safir

Maya Goldberg-Safir is our current ShortDocs Challenge and Re:sound intern. New to Chicago, Goldberg-Safir has spent the last four years studying Sociology, concocting dining hall recipes and interviewing dozens of fellow students at Middlebury College in Vermont. A 2010 Middlebury Fellow in Narrative Journalism, she pursued a number of creative projects while in college, from writing a food blog about weird dining hall recipes to co-authoring the preeminent anonymous Twitter account on campus (think: The Onion meets liberal arts).

(Pictured left to right)
Gwen Macsai
Julie Shapiro
Katie Mingle
Johanna Zorn