Jay Allison is one of public radio's most accomplished producers. He is currently the host and curator of This I Believe on NPR. Over the last thirty years, he has independently produced hundreds of documentaries and features for radio and television, and has won virtually every major industry award, including five Peabodys. He co-created the acclaimed websites Transom.org and the Public Radio Exchange. He also founded the public radio stations for Martha's Vineyard, Nantucket, and Cape Cod where he lives.
(In Praise of the Sandbox)

Elizabeth Arnold is currently a freelance correspondent for NPR, after 15 years of reporting for the network from rural Alaska and as a national correspondent from the halls of Congress and the presidential campaign trail. Now she's back in Alaska, where she continues to report on the social, economic, and political repercussions of environmental policy, for Morning Edition, All Things Considered and Weekend Edition . She's an avid hiker, skier, and long-distance runner. (Stand Tall)

Peter Leonhard Braun

-20 years of independent feature making
-20 years of being head of features at Sender Freies Berlin
-22 years of running the International Feature Conference (IFC)
-28 years of responsibility, first at Prix Futura Berlin and then at Prix Europa (TV, Radio, Internet)

Makes a professional age of 90.
At present, treasurer and radio director of Prix Europa.
(With a Bird's Eye, Emancipation of Sound)

As Chicago Public Radio’s senior metro desk editor, Cate Cahan conceives and researches stories, edits scripts and organizes long-term projects including investigations and series. She works with a team of 6 reporters and numerous freelancers who cover such issues as politics, housing and urban affairs. Cahan has received more than a dozen Peter Lisagor awards and three Sigma Delta Chi awards, most recently as editor on a project that examined abuses among children at the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center.(Group [Radio] Therapy)

Sean Cole is a senior reporter for Weekend America. Over the last seven years he has also contributed to public radio programs including Marketplace, Studio 360, All Things Considered and This American Life. Cole’s career in radio developed at WBUR in Boston, where he held every job from news intern to reporter/host for the Inside Out Documentary Unit. Cole has won numerous awards including a Radio-Television News Directors Association Award. He graduated from Marlboro College in 1993 with a BA in Theater and Creative Writing. (The Wonders of Narcissism)

Ira Glass is the creator and host of the award-winning public radio program This American Life (TAL), which is heard each week by 1.8 million people on 500 public radio stations. In 2001, Time magazine named Glass "Best Radio Host in America."  A television version of TAL premiered in March 2007 on the Showtime network to great critical acclaim and three Emmy nominations. While producing the series for the cable network, Glass and his staff continue to create original radio shows. (Audio Doctor)

Mark Greenberg is a musician who lives in Chicago, Illinois with his wife Ann-Marie and their three children Georgia, August, and Frankie. In the early 90’s, Greenberg was a member of the musical group the Coctails, who toured extensively, recorded many records together, and even reunited in 2005 for a tour of Japan. Greenberg and Ann-Marie own and operate two music-for-use companies: Mayfair Recordings and Mayfair Workshop, where Greenberg composes music for soundtracks, spots, records, and video games. (Greenberger and Greenberg: On Story and Music)

David Greenberger has spent the past three decades conversing with the elderly and publishing the results in a periodical called The Duplex Planet. His approach is outside the realm of oral history, focusing on exploring what the whole of society has in common with old folks: individualism, a desire to be known, and a hope of growing old with dignity. The work has yielded monologue performances, books, CDs, a comic book adaptation, two documentaries, a one-act play and a short film.
(Greenberger and Greenberg: On Story and Music)

Director of KRCB’s Voice of Youth, Tatiana Harrison, spent her teen years directing plays. In college, Cognitive Science studies complemented her Film major. For two years in Hollywood, she tried to understand post-modern philosophers, i.e. Jacques Derrida, with whom she once danced the tango! After four years as a Peru-based radio correspondent, she retreated to Northern California, where her life’s digressions finally coalesced. The job: to help youth producers publicly map their worlds, particularly the inner world of kids living amid Latino gang rivalry. (Options and Futures: Teenagers on the Radio)

Based in Brooklyn, Ann Heppermann and Kara Oehler have been producing radio together since 2002. Their work has aired nationally and internationally on public radio shows including: This American Life, Morning Edition, Weekend America, BBC's A World in Your Ear, Re:Sound, and numerous others. A short documentary they produced for the Third Coast Festival in 2003 has been featured at festivals around the world and was recently part of the Peabody Award-winning Hearing Voices program Crossing Borders.

Together, Heppermann and Oehler have received many honors, including NFCB Gold and Silver Reels, and awards from the Associated Press and the TCIAF. Currently, along with Rick Moody, they're working on a series for Weekend America about people's most memorable songs from childhood. It's called Song and Memory. (The Sounds Inside)

Sean Hurley is a writer, performer and musician.  He lives in New Hampshire with his wife and son.  His story-based podcast Atoms, Motion & the Void won New Hampshire Magazine’s “Best Podcast in New Hampshire for 2007”. Hurley will be presenting a one man stage version of Atoms, Motion & the Void at the Players’ Ring Theater in Portsmouth, New Hampshire during December of 2007.  He also writes music for The Ron & Fez Show, heard daily on XM Satellite Radio. His stories and music can be heard at: www.radioghost.com. (Presenting the 2007 Third Coast Festival ShortDocs: Dollar Storeys)

Jeffrey Letterly is a real live interdisciplinary artist. In addition to writing music and making sound art, he has danced, acted, made movies, written stories, and created various live and not live performances. His work has been presented from the midwest to the east coast and in a multitude of locations in Chicago. He is also half of the country-tinged band Urban Inbreed and heads up the multifaceted super group The 11th Hour Orchestra. (Presenting the 2007 Third Coast Festival ShortDocs: Dollar Storeys)

David Maxon is a songwriter, sound artist, and audio documentarian living and working in Brooklyn, New York.His work has included audio installations in association with the Brooklyn-based art group Project 1981and music for several independent films from Chicago-based Mudgeonsoul Productions.He was born and raised in Wisconsin and has a degree from Vermont Law School. (Presenting the 2007 Third Coast Festival ShortDocs: Dollar Storeys)

Steve Mencher got hooked on radio as a kid, listening to Larry Josephson on WBAI. He has produced radio for Carnegie Hall, NPR and the Library of Congress. He developed the first museum website for the Smithsonian, wrote and produced audio tours for the Getty Museum, and wrote and directed a TV documentary about Bill Gates and the Codex Leicester. Mencher won a fellowship from the NEA, and shared a couple of awards while producing NPR’s Justice Talking. He runs Mensch Media in Takoma Park, MD, and is now a senior producer of digital media at AARP.  (Getting to Yes…Perfecting Your Pitch)

Jonathan Messinger is the books editor of Time Out Chicago. He is also the founder and co-host of The Dollar Store Show, a literary and comedy series featuring performances inspired by junk purchased from dollar stores. He co-runs the Chicago-based publishing company Featherproof Books, which just published his first collection of short stories, Hiding Out. Messinger's fiction has appeared in various places, including Resonance and Rainbow Curve, and is forthcoming in Other Voices and Awake!, an anthology from Soft Skull Press. (Presenting the 2007 Third Coast Festival ShortDocs: Dollar Storeys)

Michele Norris is a host of NPR’S All Things Considered. Before joining NPR, Norris worked as a television correspondent for ABC News and she has worked as a print reporter for the Washington Post, Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times. Norris has received numerous awards, including the Livingston Award, The NABJ Salute to Excellence Award, an Emmy and a Peabody. Norris also narrated the 5-part radio series on Black Choral Music called Every Voice and Sing! and the radio documentary, Say it Plain: A Century of Great African-American Speeches. (Meet the Makers)

Mendi + Keith Obadike tell stories with sound. They’ve webcast their opera The Sour Thunder (Bridge Records), won an award for Outstanding Sound Design from the Connecticut Critic’s Circle for work at the Yale Repertory Theater, released a book of poetry entitled "Armor and Flesh", and received commissions from The Whitney Museum, the Whitechapel Gallery of London, and EAI /The NY African Film Festival. They are presently working on a commissioned piece for Princeton’s Laptop Orchestra and producing a compilation album of text-sound composition. Keith has an MFA in Sound Design from Yale University and Mendi has a PhD in Literature from Duke University. (She Launched Channel Zero)

Nina Perry is an independent radio producer, composer and sound designer from London. She's produces features with Falling Tree Productions for BBC Radio 4. Perry has also composed music and sound design for radio dramas, documentaries, theatre, dance, audio books and film. In 2002 she was BBC Radio Drama Composer-in-Residence. (Presenting the 2007 Third Coast Festival ShortDocs: Dollar Storeys)

Rebecca Peterson works and lives in St Paul, Minnesota with her two kids, three cats and a dog. She was the subject of Mary Beth Kirchner's documentary, A Year to Live, a Year to Die. (Documenter and Documentee)

Joe Richman is an independent producer for NPR's All Things Considered and the founder of Radio Diaries. Over the past ten years, Radio Diaries has helped to pioneer a model for working with people to document their own lives. Past productions include: Teenage Diaries, Prison Diaries, My So-Called Lungs, New York Works, Mandela: An Audio History, and Thembi's AIDS Diary. Richman also teaches part  time at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism. (Documenter and Documentee)

Neil Sandell is senior producer of CBC Radio’sOutfront, an award-winning program that helps listeners create documentaries about their own lives. His work as an editor and producer has won recognition from the New York Festivals, the Gabriel Awards, the Gracies, Amnesty International Canada, the RTNDA, and the Ohio State Awards.  Last year, Between Friends won the Third Coast Festival's Radio Impact Award. Sandell began his broadcasting career writing radio drama. (Secrets, Lies, and Whispers: Crafting the Personal Documentary)

Claire Schoen has been producing media for over 25 years. Her early years as a filmmaker and photographer gave Schoen an appreciation for the power of visuals and a love of the documentary form. Through radio, she continues to paint pictures in sound. She has produced over 20 long-format radio documentaries for national and international distribution. Related audio work includes radio features, sound design for films, audio tours and educational audio tapes. Schoen is currently teaching documentary radio production at U.C. Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism. (Making a Scene)

Andrea Seabrook is the weekend host of NPR's All Things Considered. Her news and cultural interviews reach millions of people every weekend. Previously she was NPR's Congressional reporter, specializing in the House of Representatives. Seabrook also covered both the Kerry and Bush campaigns in '04, and anchored NPR's election night coverage in '06. When in the host chair, Seabrook is as likely to talk about videogames and Battlestar Galactica, as she is about Congress. (Audio Doctor) Photo ©2007 NPR, by Stephen Voss.

Ben Shapiro has been producing and editing documentaries and series, heard on many public radio programs, for nearly 20 years. He is also an Emmy-award winning documentary television/film producer and cinematographer. (Audio Doctor)

Third Coast Festival Managing Director Julie Shapiro has been with the Festival since its inaugural year (2000). Before moving to Chicago, Shapiro worked at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke and produced Storylines Southeast, a public radio series about literature from that region. Shapiro makes audio art for public presentation, teaches at Loyola University and can occasionally be heard on the public radio airwaves. (Presenting the 2007 Third Coast Festival ShortDocs: Dollar Storeys)

Daniel H Steinberg is a recovering mathematician who loves to help other people tell their stories. He produces audio for Apple, Disney, Sun, Intel, O'Reilly, the ACM, and other companies and organizations. He's written a dozen books and hundreds of articles. Steinberg edits books for The Pragmatic Programmers. His favorite stories always involve his wife and daughters. (When and How to Sell Out)

Jesse Thorn is the host and producer of The Sound of Young America, "a public radio show about things that are awesome." The Sound was the first public radio program west of the Mississippi to podcast, and has been downloaded over 1.2 million times. In addition to The Sound, Thorn produces three other podcasts for his MaximumFun.org network -- the talk show "Jordan Jesse GO!", the comedy series Coyle & Sharpe: The Imposters and The Kasper Hauser Comedy Podcast, which was chosen by iTunes as one of the best podcasts of 2006. (Piping Through "the Tubes")

As a teenager, Jeff Towne produced imaginary radio programs in his bedroom with cassette decks and a four-track reel-to-reel tape recorder. A few years later, he graduated to actual broadcasts, and a few decades later, he’s still doing fundamentally the same thing, now using flash-recorders and laptop-based computer editing systems. In his many years with the nationally-syndicated program Echoes he has recorded interviews and musical performances in locations ranging from closets to cathedrals. Jeff is also the "Tools Editor" for Transom.org, a Peabody Award-winning website dedicated to channeling new work and voices to public radio. (Tech Table)

Carolyn Warren is executive producer of cultural programming for CBC Radio, based in Montreal, Canada. She has worked in radio since 1989, producing award-winning current affairs and cultural magazine programs as well as features and documentaries for national CBC programs including Ideas and Sunday Edition. Since 2004, Warren has been a producer of Wiretap with Jonathan Goldstein. She’s also Executive Producer of the CBC Literary Awards and Canada Writes, a radio program that launches in Canada coast-to-coast this fall. (Audio Doctor)

Pamela Z is a composer/performer who makes solo works combining a wide range of vocal techniques with electronic processing and sampled sounds. She has also composed scores for dance, film, and new music chamber ensembles. Her audio works have been presented in exhibitions at the Whitney Museum in New York City and she has toured throughout the US, Europe, and Japan in concerts and festivals. Her numerous awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship and the NEA/JUSFC Fellowship. (The Pendulum and Other Works)