Radio Drama Revival announces new team members and upcoming revamp

Radio Drama Revival, a podcast dedicated to and recognized for shining a light on independent audio fiction podcasts and their creators for twelve years, is pleased to announce that Wil Williams and Elena Fernández-Collins have joined the team. Williams and Fernández-Collins are popular podcast journalists and critics, dedicated to lifting up the voices of independent and marginalized podcast creators, and published in online media such as Discover Pods, Bello Collective, Polygon, and The Mary Sue.

Radio Drama Revival would also like to thank Matthew and Monique Boudreau, line producer and submissions researcher and editor, for their dedicated help to the team since 2015. We wish them luck in all their future endeavors.

Williams and Fernández-Collins have joined Radio Drama Revival at a point of transition, which will lead to a revamped website and Patreon and a more varied selection of audio fiction. Radio Drama Revival’s mission is to showcase the vitality and diversity of audio fiction, and that means shifting and expanding focus when the landscape changes. Radio Drama Revival’s two new team members are deeply engaged with the current landscape of audio fiction, which has been blossoming at an astonishing rate. Their knowledge will help Radio Drama Revival grow not just in the number of shows the team is able to cover, but in the equitable representation of underrepresented voices of many intersecting identities, such as trans and non-binary people, disabled people, people of color, and queer people. This is especially important as we witness the organic growth of their presence and their art in the audio fiction industry.

David Rheinstrom, current host of the podcast, says: “​When Fred passed the torch to me in late 2015/early 2016, I told him that this period of podcasting was like the Cambrian Explosion—a period in geological history when you started to see this sudden, massive increase in the diversity of animal phyla: not just algaes and early fungi and giant amoebas but trilobites, molluscs, the first, weird-lookin’ jawless fish!

If that was true in 2016, it’s even more true now—everywhere I look, I see shimmering schools of podcasts I could have scarcely dreamed of—a profusion of new shows so vast that I can’t keep up with them. To catalogue the best specimens, this expedition will need more naturalists!

Elena and Wil are experts. I’m staggered by their ability, and we have complementary taste; I’m so excited for you to see what the two of them will bring to the show.​”

The show’s original creator, Fred Greenhalgh, heartily agrees.​ “I started Radio Drama Revival in what I dub the ‘end of the early days of podcasting.’ At the time there was one other podcast showcasing audio drama (The Sonic Society) and a couple dozen producers scattered across the globe connected via an email listserv. In the ensuing years, we’ve seen a community of tens of thousands of listeners, and hundreds of producers, organize around this podcast. The ‘revival’ of audio fiction is alive and well, with fiction podcasts poised to shape modern culture and both follow the trends, and buck, what’s happening elsewhere in entertainment. You couldn’t find two more perfect people than Elena and Wil to speak to the transformation of audio fiction as it becomes a powerful cultural force globally.”

Listeners are encouraged to check out the ​Twitter account ​and ​Patreon​ for updates.

About Radio Drama Revival:

Radio Drama Revival is a bi-weekly podcast featuring the best of contemporary audio drama (work produced after the golden age of radio). We also occasionally dabble in exploring earlier audio works from a cultural/historical perspective.

Broadcast and podcast since 2007, we have over 450 hours of original, contemporary audio fiction here for your listening pleasure.