Category: Casting Light Essays

photo from the stage in an auditorium, of rows and rows of empty,b lue chairs, with two balconies, disappearing into the long darkness.

How can we support marginalized creators at conventions?

Elena Fernández Collins January 28, 2019

While I did not give any specifics for PodCon 2 hopes in the previous issue, I think it would be helpful to talk briefly about one thing: featured guests, speakers, and why podcasting as a medium growing into having multiple, …

black and white photo of a pair of white headphones standing upright in the open spine of a book, sunlight cast across the bottom half.

What’s up with book to podcast adaptations?

Elena Fernández Collins December 2, 2018

We’re all aware, possibly painfully so, of that podcast-to-TV adaptation pipeline and the possibility of podcasts being made solely so that they can be picked up by a movie and TV studio for development. We absolutely have to be wary …

a photo of an empty auditorium, brightly lit, with wooden chairs in the middle and two aisles going up on either side.

What does the wave of podcast conventions mean for audio fiction?

Elena Fernández Collins November 5, 2018

We’re hip-deep in the winter convention season! I’ve recently returned from the podcast track at the Austin Film Festival, Vancouver is gearing up to have their first festival in a few days, and several cities are gearing up for their …

Photo of a bridge lit with yellow lights, focused on the stone supports underneath. At night.

On Supporting People of Color in the Audio Industry

Elena Fernández Collins October 24, 2018

There have been a lot of changes, big headlines, and ground-rumbling in podcast-land lately. For me, one of those earthquake moments was Phoebe Wang’s speech at Third Coast. I wasn’t present, but I was following as soon as I saw the first tweet …

A landscape of a decrepit and abandoned wooden railway, with dead leafless trees on either side and a dark sky with only a faint, thin, blurred line of light in the distance. Creepy, haunted atmosphere.

Genre Discussion: How do we discuss mental illness in horror?

Elena Fernández Collins October 11, 2018

Content Warning: I’m talking about mental illness and its depiction in horror (as someone with a mental illness); as such I make mentions of ableist language, various symptoms, and gamifying mental illness. I spent all weekend at a horror film …

A painting of Ivan the Fool riding a margic carpet with a giant magical lantern, over a bare forest ending at an ongoing river, with birds flying off in the lower right. A sensatin of greyness, desolation, the edge of the world.

Genre Discussion: What can be counted as magical realism?

Elena Fernández Collins September 12, 2018

Magical realism is a post-colonial genre of fiction, originating in and heavily represented by Latin American authors from countries colonized and exploited by various European empires and governments.

Foreground: books on a shelf stacked to form a square hole; Background, through the hole: a man and a woman smiling at each other, but you can only see their smiles and chins and their shoulders.

How can we engage with audio fiction in languages we don’t speak?

Elena Fernández Collins August 28, 2018

One of the subjects podcasters and podcast critics constantly circle back to is the status of podcasting as a very slow-growing medium, even though it’s only slightly more than a decade old as a medium. Tied into this problem of …

An edited photo of a heavily industrialized city with many skyscrapers, and a sensation of a desert in the distance and lots of air pollution, all stemming from what it likely an explosion of some kind far away that is large and bright, like a setting sun

Genre Discussion: Engaging with dystopian and light-hearted fictions

Elena Fernández Collins July 30, 2018

To start this off with an understatement, we’re living — all of us, worldwide — in some particularly turbulent times in all spheres of life: socially, politically, economically, and environmentally. In 2017, there were a lot of articles about the rise of dystopian fiction, mostly focused on …

A photo of scrabble tiles, and the word NICHE settled into place on a scrabble tile holder

What kinds of support can niche communities build?

Elena Fernández Collins July 16, 2018

With the upcoming Podcast Movement convention, where we’ll see not only a fiction in podcasting panel but an article in the booklet written by yours truly, it’s a good time to reflect on the podcasting community and its various niches, …

A close-up photo of a police line that says CRIME SCENE DO NOT CROSS

Genre Discussion: The necessity of subversion in true crime parody

Elena Fernández Collins July 2, 2018

A warning before we start: I’m talking about true crime parodies, and violence against women and minority communities. Nothing graphic. Ever since A Very Fatal Murder made waves in headlines, the parodies of the true crime genre are coming in droves, having …