National Public Radio's show
State of the Re:Union devotes part of each program to what they call "Dear City" letters. With Dear City Letters, people who are making a difference where they live are asked if they'd be willing to write a letter TO their city. These can be written from a place of love, anger, humor and beyond, addressing the likes and dislikes or breaking misconceptions. The producers of State of the Re:Union would like to read your Dear City letter and have invited the members of West Virginia Writers, as well as any other resident of West Virginia, to submit such letters.
The producers of the program will be visiting our state in mid July to record stories by those writers whose letters are chosen. Some of those recordings will be broadcast as part of the program and will also be posted to their website. (Similarly, WV Writers will also be producing a podcast of telephone readings of such letters.)
If you have a letter you'd like to write to your town, here are the submission guidelines for
State of the Re:Union.
- People can feel free to be as creative as they'd like... the only constraint is to keep it under 400 words.
- all the letters should start the same way with "Dear _____ [your town name here],” i.e. if you live in Parkersburg, you should start “Dear Parkersburg.”
- Also, remember to refer to your home in the second person (You). We want these to sound like you're speaking directly to your home.
- Letters can be sent to the show's producer, Tina Antolini, by email at: Tina@stateofthereunion.com.
Deadline for Dear City Letter submissions will be July 20.
Semi-separate from the above: If you would like to record your letter for use in a special WV Writers Dear City Letter podcast, you can do so via our voicemail hotline. To record your voicemail, just phone 304-661-9745. You will have 2:45 sec to record your dear city letter.
If your letter runs longer, feel free to call back and record the rest.
And if you mess up, just say 3…2… 1 and start where you left off; we can edit out the errors.
Deadline for these will also be July 20.Again, the podcast recording is separate from the State of the Re:Union submission process, so be sure to submit your letter to them at Tina@stateofthereunion.com first. We do plan to allow the producer of the show to listen our voicemail recordings as well, but ours is not the official submission outlet.
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