FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Sep 14, 2011 #156
Contact: Laura Byerley
(816) 235-1592
New Letters on the Air wins 2011 Clarion Award for best Women's Issues Radio Program
Program will be honored at the 2011 Association for Women in Communications national conference
KANSAS CITY, Mo. - "New Letters on the Air," a nationally-distributed public radio literary program produced by New Letters magazine at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, (UMKC), received a 2011 Clarion Award from the Association for Women in Communications. The weekly program will be honored at the 2011 national conference on Oct. 15 in Tulsa, Okla.
The award-winning entry, submitted by producer/host Angela Elam for the best "Women's Issues Radio Program" award, features readings from "When She Named Fire: An Anthology of Contemporary Poetry by American Women," edited by Andrea Hollander Budy. Produced with assistance from "New Letters on the Air" staff members Dennis Conrow, Annie Walsh and UMKC student Max Mosley, the show features a reading recorded at The Writers Place in Kansas City and "New Letters on the Air" interviews with poets. Originally aired in honor of Women's History Month in March 2010, the show features six poets: Jo McDougall, Michelle Boisseau, Robin Behn, Dorianne Laux, Alice Friman and Andrea Hollander Budy. The program can be heard on the "New Letters on the Air" website through October.
"New Letters on the Air" archive programs are becoming widely accessible, thanks to a Save America's Treasures grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Park Service. New Letters is working with Miller Nichols Library's Marr Sound Archives to digitize the archives, which date back to the radio show's beginning in 1977. The archives were described by a Clarion judge as "one of the largest and best collections of recordings of contemporary authors."
This information is available to people with speech or hearing impairments by calling Relay Missouri at (80
