Growing your radio ears: How to listen and write like an audio storyteller

Narrative audio storytelling mixes art, journalism, and documentary. This workshop will introduce you to the basic building blocks of nonfiction audio storytelling – scripting, scene, character, and natural sound. How can sound add dimension and texture to a narrative? What does it look like to interview someone, and to truly listen to them – not only to their words, but to the inflection and tone of their voice, and to weave it into a story in the most effective way? How can sound elicit emotion, memory, and place? What does it mean to listen to the world around us? Participants will turn into sound collectors, embarking on an audio scavenger hunt in the city of Butte to create a sound collage of the city, learning how to listen for good tape, while also learning the basic vocabulary and formats that audio storytelling can take.

This workshop is hosted by April Resident Katie Meyers

Katie Myers is a writer in the mountain South. Previously, she worked as a journalist at Grist, an environmental magazine, and WMMT 88.7 FM, an eastern Kentucky community radio station. She’s also participated in the Appalachian Writer’s Workshop, the Inside Appalachia Folkways Reporting Fellowship, and the Tennessee Playwrights Studio Fellowship, and was awarded a Kristi Havens Memorial Fellowship at Sundress Academy for the Arts. Her work has appeared in the BBC, Belt Magazine, and Scalawag Magazine, among others, as well as onstage in Nashville, New York, and Knoxville. She writes about workers, energy transition, ghosts, memory, wilderness, and small-town politics.