Third Coast Festival artistic director Julie Shapiro has been with the Festival since its inaugural year (2000). Before moving to Chicago, Shapiro spent years behind record stores counters in multiple cities before landing in North Carolina to work at the the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. These days, she teaches radio documentary in Chicago and beyond, keeps a blog about sound, and can occasionally be heard on the public radio airwaves. 

Rick and Megan Shaw Prelinger are founders of the Prelinger Library, an appropriation-friendly, browsable collection of approximately 40,000 books, periodicals, printed ephemera, government documents, and other cultural bits. Unlike at most libraries, visitors to the Prelinger Library are encouraged to browse to their hearts’ content and make copies of any materials they choose. Appropriation is encouraged and re-use of all harvested content is perfectly acceptable.