A week at the beach! 🏖️

But not just any beach. BOMBAY BEACH. A former resort town turned “ghost town” turned art colony and so much more on the shores of the Salton Sea in the Imperial Valley of Southern California.

This two weeks-ish pop-up newsletter will chronicle my experiences in the Transom Audio Storytelling Workshop where I’ll be holed up with a few other radio aspirants flying in from all over the country to produce field stories under the tutelage of veteran producers and the connoisseurs of community storytelling over at KDEZ 91.1.

We’ll be crawling all over the place decked out in cables and sound gear on the hunt for good talkers. If I’ve learned anything from the cold calls I’ve made into town this past month trying to set up interviews it’s that Bombay Beach is full of people with stories and a fierce devotion to place I want to know more about.

What you can expect if you subscribe: Ten not perfect emails with thoroughly unprofessional photographs reflecting on what I’m learning about the medium, but also where — because Bombay Beach has main character energy.

These won’t be long missives because we have homework each night. In fact, I’m probably nuts for adding more pressure to my trip, so if all you get is a picture of my dinner and a few lines, forgive me. But I have a feeling it’ll be good.

I’ll send the first email before the workshop begins on Saturday, January 31st, then a daily email during the course of the workshop from February 1st-8th, and a final reflection by Saturday, February 14th 🩷.

Then POOF! 💨, it’s all over. The newsletter will get archived here and on my website, where you can also subscribe to Somethingburger, my ongoing newsletter about food, community, and storytelling.

Hope you join me!

Swati