Meet the winners of the 2007 Third Coast Festival / Richard H. Driehaus Foundation Competition!


(Click on each image for a better look. Photos by Stu Mullenberg)

This year we introduced a new award, designed by electronic musican and bender-of-circuits Alex Inglizian. Not only does this award celebrate the use of sound in telling stories; it makes sound too! To kick off the 2007 TCF Awards Ceremony at the Vittum Theater in Chicago, Alex demonstrated the range of sounds/noises/bleeps/squawks the award can make.

Here's Alex, "playing" an award and introduced by ceremony host, Peter Sagal. (2:16)

Gold Award: Don't Hang Up 2: Nightlines, by Mark Burman and Alan Dein (UK)

Mark Burman (on right) thought he was going to make movies until he heard a classic Charles Parker radio ballad which stopped him in his tracks. Specializing in radio for his degree at the Polytechnic of Central London he graduated in 1985. He then spent two years founding an oral history project with Alan Dein. From 1989 he was a freelance producer, reporter and writer before joining the BBC features department in 1994. Burman still believes in the power of radio.

Alan Dein (on left) is one of Britain’s leading oral historians. He co-founded an oral history project with Mark Burman at the London Museum of Jewish Life. Since then he has carried out many major oral history projects for National Steel, the British Library and is completing a 3 year project to record the lives of those in London’s King’s Cross. He is a frequent broadcaster on the BBC.

Bronze Award: Grandpa, by Lu Olkowski with editors Jad Abumrad (host) and Ellen Horne (USA)


Lu Olkowski first thought of producing radio when she was working a stressful and boring job at a huge cable television channel.  Often, she listened to the radio and thought, "that sounds like a lot more fun," so she jumped ship. Olkowski produced her first radio story for Studio 360. Since then, she's become a regular contributor. Her work has also appeared on All Things Considered, Day to Day, Radio Lab, This American Life and Weekend America.  Perhaps most important, she has attended every single Third Coast Festival.

Accepting the Bronze Award with Lu is Jeremiah Zagar, whose family is the subject of Grandpa.

Directors' Choice Award: Before the War it Was the War, with sound engineer Louis Mitchell and executive producer Nicole Steinke (Australia)


Anna Burns is a freelance radio producer based in Sydney, Australia. When not making long-form radio documentaries she works as a researcher for ABC TV and presents a popular weekly, new music radio programme on Sydney's FBi Radio. Burns discovered Mazen Kerbaj’s blog while working on a daily television news and current affairs programme. She was compelled to tell his story and thrilled at the opportunity to combine her deep interests in politics, music, contemporary art and technology through her favourite medium, radio.

Honorable Mention: The Search for Edna Lavilla, by Sharon Davis and Eurydice Aroney with sound engineer Russell Stapleton (Australia)

Eurydice Aroney (pictured) is an independent radio documentary producer for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation where she previously hosted and produced a range of radio shows over many years. These days her documentary work is a mix of the personal and political both in form and content, and she writes and talks about radio in her day job as a journalism academic for the University of Technology in Sydney. Aroney is a founding member of the Australian Radio Audio Researchers Association and international recognition for her work includes the Third Coast Festival's Directors' Choice Award in 2003.

Sharon Davis is a producer with the Australia Broadcasting Corporation’s  Radio’s Documentaries and Features Unit.   For the past 20 years she has documented important stories both at home and abroad.  She covered the first democratic election in South Africa, and was present in Macedonia as Kosovars streamed across the border to escape the war.  In 1995 she moved to Southern Africa and worked for three years as a radio trainer and freelance correspondent.  She has won Australia’s most prestigious journalism award, the Walkley, three times for her radio documentaries. She has also been awarded the Human Rights Award, the United Nations Media Peace Prize and a special mention at the Prix Italia.

Honorable Mention: American Icons: The Great Gatsby, by Emily Botein and Studio 360 with Kurt Andersen, from PRI and WNYC (USA)


Emily Botein is an independent radio producer who recently co-curated the series Stories from the Heart of the Land with Jay Allison. Botein helped launch PRI’s The Next Big Thing in 1999 and served as its senior producer. Since 2005, she has worked with a range of shows and institutions, including American Routes, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Studio 360, National Public Radio, and Weekend America.

PRI’s Studio 360 with Kurt Andersen is public radio’s Peabody Award-winning cultural guide to the movies, music, books, art, and trends listeners want to know about.  Andersen offers insight with a wide range of guests and stories each week. A coproduction of Public Radio International and WNYC, Studio 360 is heard by about 500,000 listeners on 150 stations.

Best New Artist Award: The Dead Can't Do You Nothin', by Katie Mingle (USA)

Katie Mingle is a former house painter who always wanted to be on "the other side" of the radio. In 2006, she decided to make it happen and attended the Center for Documentary Studies in Durham, NC and later, the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies in Portland, ME. She is currently co-teaching an after school radio program at Uplift Community High School in Chicago.

Radio Impact Award: The Ground We Lived On

Sarah Kramer is currently working as a multimedia and audio producer for The New York Times. Prior, Kramer was the Senior Producer for the Peabody Award-winning project StoryCorps. Her background in radio and video journalism includes mentoring at WNYC’s Radio Rookies, and working as researcher, associate producer and field producer on documentary films for PBS and HBO including Miss America (2002 Sundance Film Festival) and HBO’s In Memoriam, September 11, 2001.