David Avram "Dave" Isay (born December 5, 1965) is an American

radio producer A radio producer oversees the making of a radio show. The job title covers several different job descriptions: *Content producers or executive producers oversee and orchestrate a radio show or feature. The content producer might organize music cho ...

and founder of Sound Portraits Productions. He is also the founder of StoryCorps, an ongoing oral history project. He is the recipient of numerous broadcasting honors, including six Peabody Awards and a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship. He is the author/editor of numerous books that grew out of his public radio documentary work. Since 2003, StoryCorps has collected and archived more than 50,000 interviews with 100,000 participants. Each conversation is preserved at the

American Folklife Center The American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. was created by Congress in 1976 "to preserve and present American Folklife". The center includes the Archive of Folk Culture, established at the library in 1928 as a repo ...

at the

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library ...

. StoryCorps is the largest single collection of personal narratives ever gathered, and millions listen to StoryCorps’ weekly broadcasts on NPR’s ''Morning'' ''Edition'' and visit its website, www.storycorps.org.

History

David Isay grew up in

New Haven New Haven is a city in the U.S. state of Connecticut. It is located on New Haven Harbor on the northern shore of Long Island Sound in New Haven County, Connecticut and is part of the New York City metropolitan area. With a population of 134,023 ...

Connecticut Connecticut () is the southernmost state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, New York to the west, and Long Island Sound to the south. Its capita ...

, and

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

, New York. He is the son of the psychiatrist Richard Isay and book editor and author Jane Isay. He graduated from Friends Seminary in 1983 and

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then- Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. In 1832, th ...

in 1987. Isay produced a wide variety of programs for

NPR National Public Radio (NPR, stylized in all lowercase) is an American privately and state funded nonprofit media organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It differs from other ...

, including the ''Yiddish Radio Project'' with Henry Sapoznik, salvaging recordings of Victor Packer. He also produced "The Execution Tapes," nineteen recordings of the 23 electrocutions carried out by the state of Georgia since 1984. Isay received a MacArthur “Genius” fellowship as a radio documentary producer before he started StoryCorps. In 2003, Isay set up an oral history recording booth inside Grand Central Terminal, in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

. He recruited oral historian Studs Terkel of Chicago to cut the ceremonial ribbon for the opening of StoryCorps' first booth. Today, StoryCorps has recording booths in Atlanta, Chicago and San Francisco. In 2005, StoryCorps converted two Airstream trailers into traveling recording studios—its MobileBooths—launching its first cross-country tour. In 2010, StoryCorps began animating a selection of their interviews with the Rauch brothers, thus making the leap from radio broadcast to television on shows like PBS’ POV and online animated videos. Isay is also a member of the Peabody Awards board of directors, which are presented by the University of Georgia's

Henry W. Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication The Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication is a constituent college of the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia, United States. Established in 1915, Grady College offers undergraduate degrees in journalism, advertising, public re ...

Awards

* 2015

TED Prize TED Conferences, LLC (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is an American-Canadian non-profit media organization that posts international talks online for free distribution under the slogan "ideas worth spreading". TED was founded by Richard Sau ...

* 2006 Rockefeller Fellow * 2001 The Hillman Prize with Stacy Abramson for "Witness to an Execution" segment on NPR's ''All Things Considered'' * 2000 MacArthur Fellows Program * 1996

The Hillman Prize The Hillman Prize is a journalism award given out annually by The Sidney Hillman Foundation, named for noted American labor leader Sidney Hillman. It is given to "journalists, writers and public figures who pursue social justice and public poli ...

with LeAlan Jones and Lloyd Newman for "Remorse: The 14 Stories of Eric Morse" segment on NPR's ''All Things Considered'' * 1994

Guggenheim Fellow Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the a ...

* Four Peabody Awards * Two Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards

Books

*
Callings: The Purpose and Passion of Work
', David Isay, Penguin Group, 19 April 2016,
''Ties That Bind: Stories of Love and Gratitude From The First Ten Years of StoryCorps''
Editor David Isay with Lizzie Jacobs, Penguin Group, 2013,
'' All There Is: Love Stories from StoryCorps''
Editor David Isay, Penguin Group, 2012,
''Mom: A Celebration of Mothers from StoryCorps''
Editor David Isay, Penguin Group, 2010,
''Listening Is an Act of Love: A Celebration of American Life from the Storycorps Project''
Editor David Isay, Penguin Group, 2007,
''Our America: Life and Death on the South Side of Chicago''
Authors LeAlan Jones, Lloyd Newman, David Isay, Photographs John Anthony Brooks, Simon and Schuster, 1998, * ''Holding On: Dreamers, Visionaries, Eccentrics, and Other American Heroes'', Authors David Isay, Photographs Harvey Wang, W. W. Norton & Company, Incorporated, 1997,
''12 American Voices: An Authentic Listening and Integrated-Skills Text''
Authors Maurice Cogan Hauck, Kenneth MacDougall, David Isay, Yale University Press, 2001,

References

External links

StoryCorps

StoryCorps on Vimeo

NPR: StoryCorps Podcast
*
"Everyone around you has a story the world needs to hear" (TED2015)
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Isay, David 1966 births American radio producers 20th-century American Jews MacArthur Fellows New York University alumni Living people Oral historians Peabody Award winners Rockefeller Fellows Friends Seminary alumni 21st-century American Jews