MinerAlert
Words on a Wire (WoW), one of the most important literary podcasts in the US, started here at UTEP 16 years ago as a KTEP radio show hosted by Creative Writing professors. It’s still going today with the participation of other UTEP professors and graduate students. We have four podcasts under the WoW umbrella, including Patos Salvages, in Spanish, which has the potential to become an influential literary podcast for the Americas. WoW has archives of hundreds of conversations going back more than a decade, with some of the most revered writers in the world, including five US poet laureates, Pulitzer Prize winners, as well as scientists and philosophers. We want to digitize our content, make every show available in an easy to navigate archive, and create digital stories, reels, and shorts for social media so the content can become an important resource for writers and publishers. The digitization project will involve training graduate students to help digitize and archive 16 years of Words on a Wire podcast and radio content, develop a robust webpage, and create engaging social media reels and stories to extend our reach. This project will serve as a cornerstone for reshaping the academic and professional training of MFA students in Creative Writing, equipping them with skills in digital storytelling, community engagement, and AI literacy to thrive in today’s publishing industry.