Organizers:
Piers Gelly, Assistant Professor, General Faculty, Writing and Rhetoric
Steph Ceraso, Associate Professor of Digital Writing & Rhetoric
Description:
The English Department’s “Writing with Sound” speaker series focuses on the artistic medium of the podcast. This series features brilliant people working in the podcast/audio space who give lectures open to the public and craft workshops for UVA students. The purpose of the series is to formalize and deepen a conversation that is already happening across the University: the consideration of podcast production as a distinct writing medium and art form.
Erin Anderson, Writer and Producer of Cement City
Erin gave a public lecture on Monday, November 10
Image
Erin Anderson is co-creator and producer of the Audacy Original Podcast Cement City, which tells the story of day-to-day life in a forgotten former steel town called Donora, Pennsylvania. Named one of The New York Times top ten “Best Podcasts of 2024,” the series was a 2025 National Magazine Award Finalist for Podcasting, among other honors, and recently appeared on the Essential Listening Poll “100 Greatest Podcasts of All Time.” Anderson’s independent radio and podcast stories have been featured by KCRW’s UnFictional, WHYY’s The Pulse, and the Third Coast International Audio Festival. Her debut audio drama, Our Time Is Up, won a Sarah Lawrence College International Audio Fiction Award in 2016. She is an Associate Professor in the graduate Writing Program and the Film and Media Studies Program at the University of Pittsburgh, where she earned her PhD in Critical and Cultural Studies in 2014.
In her talk, “Climbing Inside the Story,” Anderson offered a behind-the-scenes look at her years of embedded reporting in a town of 4,650 people with no banks or grocery stores or gas stations, where she and her collaborator—veteran magazine journalist Jeanne Marie Laskas—bought a house and stayed for three years. She played clips from Cement City’s first season and discussed joys, insights, and lessons learned (narrative, ethical, logistical) about what it takes to create character-driven immersion journalism for the ear: What works. Why it’s so hard. And why it’s worth doing.
Previous Speakers:
Image
Sarah Larson has contributed to the New Yorker since 2007, during which time she’s written omnivorously about culture, politics, and the horrors and wonders of being alive and conscious in the United States of America. In just the past six months, she has written sensitive and searching profiles of figures as diverse as the filmmaker Mike Leigh, the vacuum magnate James Dyson (progenitor of the Dyson Airblade, for you hand-dryer wonks out there!), first Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, and public radio legend Ira Glass, creator of This American Life. Over the past decade, Larson has also established herself as one of the few working “podcast critics” out there, having been one of the first writers to take the podcast seriously as a medium, with its own distinctive potentialities, formal qualities, and artistic lineage.
Larson gave a public talk on her decade of experience contributing podcast criticism to the magazine, playing some clips from a diverse range of podcasts that included the Atlantic’s limited series Floodlines, as well as episodes of the podcasts Nocturne and Cocaine & Rhinestones. She also met with students and faculty for a lunchtime master class to discuss her essay on the award-winning podcast episode “Finn and the Bell,” from the podcast Rumble Strip.
Image
Ronald Young, Jr. is the writer and host of Weight for It, which appeared on many publications’ best-of-2023 lists. Weight for It is a podcast about fatness and the ways people perceive fat bodies—including how those who are fat perceive themselves. While many body image podcasts and media are focused on white women, Ronald Young Jr. gives a black male perspective, opening up an honest and nuanced dialogue about weight, masculinity, and race. Young is a skillful writer and storyteller who offers valuable knowledge about narrative writing for audio media.
In a public talk titled “Telling Vulnerable Stories,” Young shared some behind-the-scenes insights on crafting some remarkably intimate moments—an eye-wateringly candid conversation with an ex, and a reflection on his mother’s end of life—that appeared in seasons 1 and 2 of Weight For It. And in an open forum for “Writing with Sound” students, Young shared advice on interviewing, carving stories out of research, and using sound design in engaging ways.
Image
Avery Trufelman is the writer and performer of the podcasts Articles of Interest (Radiotopia), Nice Try! (Curbed/Vox), and The Cut (New York Magazine), and a former staffer at 99% Invisible. Trufelman’s work in the podcast medium addresses such diverse topics as fashion, design, architecture, and utopian communities, and has received extensive international acclaim, including favorable coverage from the New Yorker, the New York Times, the BBC, the Irish Times, the Sydney Morning Herald, and Time Magazine.
Trufelman’s talk/performance, “Summon the Muse,” explored the genesis of several stories from across her career, engaging with Anne Carson’s Eros the Bittersweet in advancing a theory of the podcast medium’s distinct formal capabilities. Trufelman also met with “Writing With Sound” students to discuss how she reported and wrote the Articles of Interest episode “The Clueless Closet,” and to workshop some story pitches for students’ final projects.
Image
Anna DeShawn is a Chicago-born social entrepreneur, storyteller, and community organizer. She is the writer and performer of the Queer News podcast, which won the 2023 Ambie award for Best DIY Podcast. DeShawn founded E3 Radio, an online radio station playing queer music and reporting on queer news with an intersectional lens, and co-founded The Qube, a podcast production company and curated platform featuring music and podcasts by BIPOC and QTPOC artists. DeShawn was recently inducted into the Chicago LGBT Hall of Fame, on the basis of her having “created a canon of work that is unmatched” in the queer media space.
DeShawn sat down with UVA English professor Dr. Lisa Woolfork—an acclaimed podcast producer herself—for a public Q&A that focused on DeShawn’s experiences as a proudly independent audio maker and entrepreneur. (DeShawn also brought along a highly recommended Vocaster podcasting kit, which was raffled off to one lucky audience member thanks to the good people at Focusrite!)
For Students:
If you’re interested in taking a class about sound and/or podcasts, check out these offerings in the English Department:
ENWR 3640: Writing with Sound (taught by Steph Ceraso)
Here’s a story about the class in UVA Today
ENWR 3640: Writing with Sound (taught by Piers Gelly)
ENWR 2520: Audible Writing: Writing for and with Sound (taught by Jon D’Errico)
Photo Gallery:
Image
Image
Image
Image
Image
Image
