Query Letter

49 Seahorse Lane

Christchurch, VA 23031

May 22, 2015

Dear Ira Glass,

As a tenth grade English student at Christchurch School, two of my peers and I were required to create our own podcast regarding Shakespeare. Prior to this assignment, our class read Shakespeare’s famous play, Hamlet. We read it as a class, acting as if we were actors reading through to play before performing it. The book that our class studied was the Cambridge School Shakespeare: Hamlet book. This book contained tons of side notes about Shakespeare. The information that the book provided was interesting, but it seemed like it was only what’s on the surface of Shakespeare’s life. There is so much information about Shakespeare, but it’s basically general knowledge. This information seems to be the information that comes to everyone’s mind when they hear “William Shakespeare.”

Just like everything else, we knew that there was more to his life than the bit of information that we already knew. When we were assigned the assignment to create our own podcast, we saw the perfect opportunity to dig deeper into Shakespeare’s “secret life” and share it with others who also feel like there’s so much more to Shakespeare. He seemed to have a lot of inspiration and experiences that influenced his famous plays and sonnets, but what was it? My two friends and I were very curious to find out, and share what we discovered.

Personally, I have always been interested in writing and expressing my thoughts in various different ways. Up until this year, I had never heard of a podcast. Well, I had heard of it, but only because the app that comes with apple products. I never actually knew what it was for though. Just like Shakespeare, there was more to this little picture than what I thought I knew! Over the course of about a month, my tenth grade english class at Christchurch School was required to listen to at least an hour of podcasts a week. Honestly, at first I dreaded having to take an hour of my busy, homework filled week to listen to people talk. After listening to just one podcast by This American Life, I was completely hooked. The first podcast I listened to was about a high school in the rougher parts of Chicago. Before listening to a few of the podcasts, I felt completely oblivious to what it would be like to attend school in a bigger city with over a few thousand students. The high school that I attend, Christchurch School, has roughly two hundred students total, and about forty students in the sophomore class of 2017. One of the major aspects of the This American Life podcasts was that the podcasters spoke to and interviewed people with first hand experience on the topic. For example, in the podcast on the high school in Chicago, students from the high school were directly interviewed on the show. To me, this made it so much more interesting because it was students the same age as me, but with a completely different experience in high school. Since Shakespeare is a fairly studied topic in many high schools across america. My friends and I created a podcast that discussed the life of Shakespeare “behind scenes.” Since we seemed to be interested in students our age talking about their experiences, we thought that it could be interesting for our fellow high school peers across America studying the same topic to learn from our interests. My friends, Abby, Joseph, and I, Libby Nashwinter, would like to propose that our podcast episode be produced and aired as either a one hit or as a series on This American Life. We’d love to produce a series on either Shakespeare or even the secret life of Shakespeare if you or the crew at This American Life is interested. Thank you for your time! We’d love to hear from you and your crew at enashwinter@christchurchschool.org!

Thanks,

Libby Nashwinter