Jonathan Miller returned to the US in 2001 after working
for 13 years as a journalist, writer and editor in Southeast Asia
and South America. He has produced features and news reports
for NPR, Marketplace, Monitor Radio, BBC, CBC, VOA, Radio Netherlands and
Radio Deutsche Welle, and has written for the New
Yorker, LIFE, Condé Nast
Traveler, Parents, American Way, Christian Science Monitor,
Far Eastern Economic Review and many other publications.
He has also served as a consulting writer and editor for
international development institutions, including the Food & Agriculture
Organisation of the UN, Oxfam America and the Asian Development
Bank. Jon was editorial director of Think
Global, the
2005 Public Radio Collaboration on globalization, involving more than 300 stations and 30 national shows. He is
currently an Affiliated Scholar at the Polson
Institute for Global Development at Cornell University and executive producer of the Homelands series WORKING.
Sandy Tolan,
Senior Collaborating Producer
Sandy Tolan is co-founder of Homelands Productions. Since 1982, he has produced dozens of documentaries and features for National Public Radio, Public Radio International, American Public Media, and other public radio outlets. Much of his focus has been on land, water, natural resources and indigenous affairs in the US, Mexico, Central and South America, the Caribbean, Central Europe, the Middle East, and South Asia. His programs have won numerous awards, including three from the Overseas Press Club, the DuPont-Columbia Silver Baton, three Robert F. Kennedy awards for reporting on the disadvantaged, a Harry Chapin World Hunger Year award, and a United Nations Gold Medal award. Sandy is the author of The Lemon Tree: An Arab, A Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East (Bloomsbury, 2006), based on his award-winning documentary for NPR's Fresh Air about a Palestinian man and a Jewish woman whose families lived in the same house before and after the founding of Israel. The book won a Christopher Award for "affirming the highest values of the human spirit" and was Booklist's "Editor's Choice" for best adult non-fiction book of 2006. It was also a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. His first book, Me and Hank (Free Press, 2000), is an exploration of heroes and race relations in America through the experience of baseball slugger Hank Aaron. Sandy teaches journalism at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California.
Alan Weisman,
Senior Collaborating Producer
Alan Weisman's reports from the US, Mexico, Canada,
Central and South America, the Caribbean, Antarctica, Europe, the
former Soviet Union and the Middle East have appeared in The Atlantic
Monthly, Harper's, New York Times Magazine, Los Angeles Times Magazine,
Audubon, Mother Jones, Condé Nast Traveler, and have been
heard on NPR and PRI. His fifth book is the New York Times best-seller The World Without Us (Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Press, 2007), which was named book of the year by TIME magazine and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. He is also the author of An
Echo In My Blood (1999); Gaviotas:
A Village to Reinvent the World (1998); La
Frontera: The United States Border With Mexico (1986); and We,
Immortals (1979). Alan has been a Fulbright Senior Scholar in
Colombia, a writer-in-residence in the Dominican Republic, a fellow
at the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, and a contributing editor
to the Los Angeles Times Magazine. Along with many radio awards
shared with his Homelands colleagues, he has received numerous awards
for his writing, including the Social Inventions Award from the
London-based Global Ideas Bank. He is associate professor of journalism and Latin American studies at the University of Arizona.
Cecilia
Vaisman, Senior Collaborating Producer
Cecilia Vaisman is a former NPR staff producer who has
produced radio features and documentaries from Central and South America,
the Caribbean, South Asia and the US. She has reported extensively on
identity and women's issues, the environment and development. Cecilia
produced the documentary series When the Rainforest Burns;
a series she co-produced on AIDS in Brazil won her an Armstrong Award.
She also created Argentina's first radio documentary news program for
Radio América in Buenos Aires. Cecilia has received the Clarion
Award and the National Federation of Community Broadcasters' Golden Reel
Award, as well as two Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards for reporting
on the disadvantaged. A co-executive producer for the Homelands series World
Views, Cecilia was also senior producer for Vanishing
Homelands and Searching
for Solutions, and project director of the Spanish
and Portuguese language versions of Searching for Solutions. She is a Visiting Fellow at the Helen Kellogg Institute for International Studies at the University of Notre Dame.
Chris Brookes
Chris Brookes is an independent radio producer whose programs have been heard in the US, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, England, The Netherlands and Canada. His documentaries have have won more than 30 awards, including the Peabody, Gabriel, Gracie, Armstrong, United Nations, Third Coast Festival/Robert H. Driehaus and New York Radio Festival Grand awards in the US; Prix Italia, Prix Marulic and Prix Europa Special Commendations for Documentary in Europe; and Canada's Atlantic Journalism Award, ACTRA Nellie, CAJ Best Investigative Journalism and CBC President awards. He is also an author, television writer and playwright, and has taught documentary feature-making and storytelling at festivals and workshops across North America and Europe. Chris currently directs the production company Battery Radio, with studios at the bottom of the cliff where Marconi received the first trans-Atlantic wireless message in St. John's, Newfoundland.
Allan Coukell is an award-winning radio reporter, producer, and
host. A native of Canada, he founded the weekly Radio New Zealand
science program Eureka!
in 1999. His documentaries have been broadcast in New Zealand,
Australia and the US, and worldwide on Radio Netherlands International.
He has also contributed to the BBC World Service, The Economist
and New York Times, and has taught broadcast journalism at the
university level. He has worked as a clinical pharmacist and as a science reporter for WBUR in Boston.
Julian
Crandall Hollick
Julian Crandall Hollick is an award-winning producer of radio documentaries
about Islam and Asia, including The World of Islam (1981-84),
Passages to India (1985-89), Letters from Jitvapur
(1991-92), Apna Street (1994-96), Monsoon
(1997) and Sadak Chhap (2002). He has written on European
politics, Islam and India for newspapers, academic journals and
magazines, including Smithsonian Magazine and Arabia. He is currently
working on a series called "Living Islam", about how Muslims
in a variety of countries integrate their faith into their other
identities. He is founder of Independent
Broadcasting Associates, whose mission is "to bring better
understanding of non-American cultures to American audiences."
Kate Davidson
Kate Davidson is an associate producer for NPR's Weekend All Things Considered. She has a background in both public television and documentary film. In the world of radio, her favorite stories have explored the effects of cultural change on language, health and identity in Native communities. During the reporting and production of "Saints and Indians," Kate lived in Flagstaff, Arizona. "Saints and Indians" received the 2006 Edward R. Murrow Award for best national news documentary from the Radio-Television News Directors Association. For her reporting on the Indian Student Placement Program, Kate was also named a finalist for the Livingston Award for Young Journalists.
Reese
Erlich
ReeseErlich began his
career in journalism in the 1960s as an investigative reporter
for the magazine Ramparts. He reports regularly for NPR, CBC,
ABC (Australia), Radio Deutsche Welle and The World, as well as
several newspapers. He was a contract correspondent for Common
Ground Radio, a weekly public radio show covering international
affairs. Reese co-authored the book Target
Iraq: What the News Media Didn't Tell You with Norman Solomon
(2003). He has produced many radio documentary series, including
Perspectives in Jazz, The Iran Project and
The Russia Project.
Jason
Felch
Jason Felch is a staff reporter for the Los Angeles Times,
where he specializes in investigative journalism. Before
joining the Times, he reported on Latin America, petroleum
and other issues for a number of outlets, including
the Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle,
NPR and Frontline World.
Vera Frankl
Vera Frankl has produced hundreds of news reports, features, documentaries and documentary series for the BBC, NPR, CBC, Deutsche Welle and Radio Netherlands. Based in London, she has reported from all over Europe and from India, where she covered the Bhopal disaster and the aftermath of Indira Gandhi's assassination. She won a silver medal at the New York Radio Festival for her documentary "Autumn Leaves," a family love story set in the Hungarian revolution. Her Special Assignment for the BBC on Algeria was short-listed for an Amnesty Award. Her articles have appeared in The Guardian, Le Monde, New York Times, Christian Science Monitor, Toronto Globe & Mail and various magazines in Britain and the US. In previous lives she worked as NPR's Europe reporter, and as a senior writer for the BBC World Service.
Deborah George
Deborah George is an independent producer, editor and reporter.
Her career has taken her to Asia, Africa and South America;
she has covered the Rwandan genocide, the war in Sierra Leone,
the politics of biotechnology and the AIDS epidemic. She
was with NPR for 15 years, as producer of Weekend Edition
Sunday and as an editor and producer on the Arts, National, Foreign
and Cultural Desks. She produced several special series
for NPR's news magazines and was the network's first liaison
for independent producers. She was also the senior editor
of American
RadioWorks, producing documentaries and investigative reports
for public radio. Since 1996, Deb has edited the RadioDiaries series
with independent producer Joe Richman.
She has received numerous awards, including the duPont Columbia Gold
and Silver
Batons, the Robert F. Kennedy Award and the Casey Award for reporting on children. "Saints and Indians," which she edited, received the 2006 Edward R. Murrow Award for best national news documentary from the Radio-Television News Directors Association. It was Deb's second Murrow Award.
Nancy Hand
Nancy Hand is a reporter/producer for Arizona
Illustrated, a nightly television news magazine produced by Tucson's
PBS affiliate, KUAT-TV, and co-host of KUAT's bilingual news
and entertainment program, Reflexiones Domingo. Her articles
have appeared in National Catholic Reporter, Recycling International,
Coast Weekly and Tucson Weekly. She has lived in El Salvador
and Spain, and has worked as a Spanish interpreter for the US State Department
and the federal courts.
María Hinojosa
María Hinojosa is senior correspondent
for the PBS program NOW and
host of NPR's Latino
USA, a weekly program reporting on news and
culture in the Latino community.
Born in Mexico City, she is a magna cum laude graduate
of Barnard College, where she majored in Latin American
studies, political economy and women's studies. From 1997
to 2005 she was a New York-based correspondent for CNN.
Prior to that, María
spent six years at NPR as a general assignment correspondent.
She has written two books and has won numerous awards for
her radio and television work.
Lorne Matalon
Lorne Matalon is a producer
and host based at WUNC in North Carolina. His work examining slavery
in Sudan was nominated for an Emmy, and he has also reported
and produced television documentaries in Brazil, Cuba and
Africa. He has filed radio stories for PRI's Capitol Hill
Bureau, CBC Radio and Radio Canada International. In Canada,
he was awarded a Gemini Award for his documentary on the
effort to rebuild a drug-ravaged neighborhood. He is a contributor
to National Geographic's Ethnosphere Project, an initiative
documenting cultures around the world.
Victoria Mauleón
Victoria Mauleón is a documentary radio and
film producer based in San Francisco. Her first radio piece, "Panorama,
Texas," which chronicled a Mexican-American family's efforts
to bring running water to their colonia outside El Paso,
Texas, aired on NPR's Latino
USA. Her production company Wide
Angle Pictures recently completed a film that follows four
African-American students at UC Berkeley. She is currently
producing a cooking series for Spanish language television.
Marianne
McCune
As a staff reporter for WNYC, Marianne McCune has
focused on immigrant communities and law enforcement issues in
New York and New Jersey. She has also reported from Burndi,
Ethiopia, Haiti, Pakistan and Mexico. She won the Daniel
Schorr Journalism Award in 2003 for her report following Pakistani
deportees back to Pakistan. She has also received awards
from the New York Press Club, New York State AP Broadcasters
Association, Newswomen's Club of New York, and Public Radio
News Directors, Inc. Marianne founded Radio
Rookies, a project that trains New York
teenagers to report and produce their own pieces. Among the Rookies' awards are a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism
Award, the Casey Medal and two Third Coast Audio Festival
awards.
Karen Michel
Karen Michel is a longtime "sound designer, sound junkie,
and producer of radio documentaries, features and experiments
in transient work for the ears." A regular contributor to
the NPR news magazines, she has won many major awards and
fellowships, and spends much of her time teaching at radio
stations, colleges and organizations around the country.
Chris
Raphael
Chris Raphael began his career covering crime and
courts for a small newspaper in Northern Virginia. Since then,
he has reported for NPR, Diversion magazine and other
media organizations. In 2002 he helped launch The
Big Story, an annual magazine that critiques media coverage,
and served as the magazine's first managing editor. He was named
a Frontline World fellow in May 2003.
Melissa Robbins
Independent producer Melissa Robbins began her journalism career as a newspaper reporter in Brooklyn, then spent two years in London, where she worked for The Guardian covering prisons. Her life in radio began with a semester at the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies in Maine. She has worked on documentary projects with Sandy Tolan and The Kitchen Sisters.
She was an associate producer of Worlds of Difference, handling the bulk of the production duties for the special hours.
Dmae
Roberts
Dmae Roberts is a playwright, journalist and educator based in
Portland, Oregon. She has produced more than 400 features, audio
arts pieces and documentaries for NPR and PRI. In 1990, she received
the George Foster Peabody award for her autobiographical radio
documentary
"MEI MEI, A Daughter's Song." Other awards include a USA Artists Fellowship from United States Artists, the
Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award, Casey Medal, UN
Silver award, Clarion award, two Heart of America awards, National
Lesbian and Gay Journalists award, two CPB awards and an award
for innovation and excellence from the Association
of Independents in Radio (AIR). Among her documentary projects
are Legacies:
Tales from America; Legacies:
Faith, Hope and Peace; Sorting
Through ShadowsStories1st.org;
and The
Breast Cancer Monologues. She is currently executive
producer of the multi-hour radio documentary series Crossing
East, about the experiences of Asian immigrants
to America.
Tatiana Schreiber
Tatiana Schreiber has worked as an independent radio producer since 1984. Her documentary series Places
Like This: Women in Prison, and Other Colors: Stories
of Women Immigrants received a NFCB
Golden Reel award, two Clarion Awards and a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism
Award. Tatiana has produced more than 100 feature pieces for NPR,
BBC, Latin File, Horizons, Monitor Radio, Living on Earth, Crossroads,
Artbeat, The Cultivated Gardener, Common Ground and other outlets.
In recent years her focus has been on agriculture, the
environment and Latin America. She recently completed a doctoral
degree in Environmental Studies, looking at cultural pluralism in
relationship to the environment, through the stories of the indigenous
and mestizo coffee farmers of Chiapas. She is also a part-time farmer,
raising and selling
organic produce in Vermont.
Elif Shafak
Elif Shafak was born in France and spent her teenage years in Spain before returning to her native Turkey. She has published five novels. The Saint of Incipient Insanities, her first novel in English, was published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in 2004. Elif holds a Ph.D. in political science, and has taught university courses on subjects ranging from "Ottoman History from the Margins" and "Turkey & Cultural Identities" to "The Queer in the Middle East." She has lived in the US since 2002. She is currently assistant professor of Near Eastern Studies at the University of Arizona. Her courses include "Literature and Exile," "Politics of Memory," and "Sexualities and Gender in the Muslim World." She continues to write for various daily and monthly publications in Turkey.
Michael Hardt is a political philosopher
at Duke University and co-author, with Antonio Negri, of
the books Empire
(2001) and Multitude
(2004).
Richard Chase Smith is a cultural
anthropologist who has been working with Amazonian peoples
since the 1960s.
He is founder and director of the Instituto
del Bien Común (Institute for the Common Good) in Lima,
Peru.
Billie Jean Isbell
is a cultural anthropologist and former
director of the Latin
American Studies Program, Cornell University.
