Ann Heppermann and Kara Oehler

Ann Heppermann and Kara Oehler are Peabody-award winning public radio producers and media artists based in Brooklyn and Boston. Their stories and long-form documentaries have aired nationally and internationally on public radio shows including: This American Life, Morning Edition, Weekend America, BBC, CBC, Radio Lab, Re:Sound, Marketplace and numerous others. Individually and collectively, their radio stories and media projects have won Peabody, RTNDA Edward R. Murrow, NFCB Golden Reel, PRNDI, Associated Press and Third Coast International Audio Festival (TCIAF) awards, and been exhibited at Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), UnionDocs and Conflux, among other venues. They have held guest lectures at TCIAF, Center for Documentary Studies at Duke, the South Asian Journalists Association Convention at Columbia University and Universität Konstanz.

In 2003, Kara and Ann created an experimental short documentary for the Third Coast International Audio Festival about undocumented migrants' experiences crossing the Sonoran Desert. The piece has been featured at festivals around the world and also published in "Documentary 101: A Guided Listening Experience for the Classroom." They were series producers for American Public Media's Weekend America. During this time, they produced the award-winning "Song and Memory" series with co-producer Rick Moody. The also produced a series about recently arrived refugees called, "One Thing" and a series about 1968 called, "This Weekend in 1968."

Kara and Ann are transmission artists with free103point9. During the fall of 2008, Ann, Kara and composer Jason Cady created "Chorus of Refuge" using interviews from their "One Thing" series with Weekend America. This sound installation transmits the stories of six refugees, living in different cities across the U.S. to six radios. The voices of the refugees are superimposed and coordinated in both rhythm and tonality to unite their narratives of struggle, survival and triumph.

Currently, Ann and Kara produce, and sometimes host, Hearing Voices from NPR.