Storyteller, Radio Producer, Writer, Traveler.

Tina Antolini is a Peabody-Award-winning storyteller and radio producer. She serves as interim Producer at NPR’s Rough Translation. Previously, she was Senior Story Producer at Pop-Up Magazine, and, before that was the founding host and producer of Gravy, a podcast with the Southern Foodways Alliance, which won two James Beard Awards during her tenure, including being named the James Beard Foundation's Publication of the Year for 2015.

Tina's worked in public radio for more than 10 years, including NPR’S State of the Re:Union (SOTRU) and New England Public Radio, and has produced stories on everything from Iraqi religious minorities to the sex lives of lobsters . Antolini won a Peabody and a national Edward R. Murrow Award for her work on SOTRU. She attended Stanford, Hampshire College, and the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies.

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Tina grew up in rural Maine on a tidal river whose shore was her playground as a child. A lifelong singer, she studied ethnomusicology at Stanford University and at Hampshire College, where she earned her B.A. in 2004. She started making radio pieces, intending them to be a vehicle for her academic fieldwork. Just a few weeks into the radio program at the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies, though, she was hooked on audio storytelling. 

After graduating, she worked at the science and nature documentary program Pulse of the Planet, before joining the staff at New England Public Radio. At NEPR, she served as a reporter, producer and local host of All Things Considered, and began filing stories for national public radio programs on everything from Iraqi religious minorities to a secret bunker housing an archive of East German films. 

In 2009, she became one of the first staff producers of State of the Re:Union (SOTRU), a new documentary program distributed by NPR. Tina helped build SOTRU into an award-winning radio show, producing stories in cities and towns across the country, from rural Kansas to Baltimore, Hawaii to Oregon. In 2015, SOTRU won a Peabody Award for the show's final full season of episodes.

In 2014, Tina partnered with the non-profit Southern Foodways Alliance to create and launch the podcast Gravy. Less than six months after its first episode, Gravy was honored by the James Beard Foundation as its Publication of the Year for 2015. It won a second James Beard Award in 2016 for "Best Podcast." Tina can bake a mean apple pie, sing a killer cover of “Mustang Sally,” and will happily spend hours in a cafe with a stack of books and newspapers to occupy her.
 

Work and awards

  • 2015 Peabody Award for State of the Re:Union

  • 2015 James Beard Foundation’s Publication of the Year for Gravy

  • 2015 Edward R. Murrow Award for State of the Re:Union’s “Trans Families” episode

  • 2015 RTDNA (Radio and Television News Director’s Association) Kaleidoscope Award for State of the Re:Union’s “Trans Families” episode

  • 2015 National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association Award for Excellence in Radio for State of the Re:Union’s “Trans Families” episode

  • 2011 National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association Award for Excellence in Radio for State of the Re:Union’s episode “Bayard Rustin: Who is This Man?”

  • 2009 Gracie Award for Outstanding Series for “Voices of the Transgender Community of Western New England” from American Women in Radio & Television

  • Associated Press Awards for Feature Reporting (2009), Investigative Reporting (2007) and Use of Sound (2007)

  • 2015 UC Berkeley 11th Hour Food & Farming Journalism Fellow

  • 2009 NPR Economic Reporting Project Fellow