Each year New York Festivals Radio Awards assembles the world's most revered storytellers from around the globe to participate on the Grand Jury. 2020's Jury is comprised of award-winning individuals from all facets of audio storytelling and are known for their creativity expertise, innovation and years of experience. These industry experts include some of the most world’s recognizable voices and captivating content producers in the radio industry. New York Festivals Radio Awards Grand Jury judge all entries on production values, organization, presentation of information, creativity, and use of the medium.
2020 Radio Awards Grand Jury member Juleyka Lantigua-Williams brings 20 years experience as a writer, reporter, editor, syndicated columnist, book editor/scout, lecturer, and audio producer to the jury panel. As Founder/CEO of Lantigua Williams & Co., an award-winning digital media studio, she produces original shows like Latina to Latina, 70 Million, and Feeling My Flo, and provides tailored consulting and white-label production services for clients that include Macmillan Podcasts, the Phi Beta Kappa Society, WHYY, KQED, and Civil Beat.
In the Jury POV interview below Juleyka shares her thoughts on changes in the industry, storytelling & technology and advice for the next generation of young storytellers.
New York Festivals Radio Awards: Share your thoughts about the future of storytelling.
Juleyka Lantigua-Williams: For me, three words capture the future of storytelling: expansive, immersive, iterative. It will be expansive because we have entered an era in narrative where the lines are blurring between fiction, sci-fi, fantasy, speculative form, and even comedy. This genre-melding will make storytelling richer, surprising, and far-reaching in ways we've not experienced before. It will be immersive thanks in large part to the confluence of story forms and technology. From simply putting earphones on and enjoying your favorite fiction podcast to stepping into a spherical 3D simulator where you're the main character in a video game, storytelling will encompass our five senses and physical bodies so the lines between the present/now and the story's timeline will become seamless. It will be iterative because consumers want to be storytellers too. They want open-ended plots. They want alternative versions. They want to have a multiplicity of POV's--all at the press of a button. And storytellers can now more easily meet these requests thanks to innovations like VR.
New York Festivals Radio Awards: What are the most profound changes you’ve noticed in the art of storytelling in the past 5 years?
Juleyka Lantigua-Williams: The most profound is the democratization of storytelling thanks to the internet, smart phones, and crowdfunding. Anyone with a good idea and the stamina to see it through to fruition can do so with a smartphone and enthusiastic supporters. Location doesn't matter. Knowing the right people doesn't matter. Having advanced degrees doesn't matter. The one thing storytelling today demands is that you believe hard and work harder to make your art.
New York Festivals Radio Awards: What types of technology do you find yourself using to enhance your storytelling?
Juleyka Lantigua-Williams: We're using RSS feeds to distribute podcasts, apps and publishing platforms to host them and generate analytics and user metrics, sound engineering software to master audio, and services such as SourceConnect to remotely link to guests.
New York Festivals Radio Awards: Any advice on the craft of storytelling that you can share with next generation?
Juleyka Lantigua-Williams: Forget about writing what you know, as the old adage advises, write into existence things you yearn to see in the world.