Associate Professor of Africana Studies and English Tess Chakkalakal and A. Leroy Greason Professor of English Brock Clarke clearly work well together. Their jointly presented recently secured a prestigious industry award.
The podcast brings classic American authors back to life for a contemporary audience by taking listeners on tours of literary homes, transporting them inside the houses where the authors lived and wrote.
The project has been honored in , which recognizes excellence in the podcasting industry, as one of the best pods of 2024. Dead Writers picked up a bronze medal in the “Best Co-Host” category as well as a Listener’s Choice Award.
The Signal Awards search for the most “potent, meaningful, and unprecedented audio projects being made today,” as its panel of judges combs through thousands of hours of audio to choose the winners. The listening public also picks its favorite finalists, who take home the additional honor of Listener’s Choice Award. This year nearly 75,000 fans from around the world took part.
“They like us! They really like us!” said Clarke, an acclaimed novelist and short story writer, who this semester is teaching a fiction writing workshop.
(Other people honored at include Anderson Cooper, Brené Brown, and Trevor Noah.)
The first season of the Dead Writers podcast, which kicked off in late July, is dedicated to Maine’s literary landscape, highlighting such authors as Harriet Beecher Stowe (Brunswick), Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Portland), and Nathaniel Hawthorne (Raymond).
Chakkalakal, who has published widely on nineteenth-century African American and American literature, and Clarke also feature in the 2024 fall issue of 含羞草研究室 Magazine. Read more.
