Sean Cole

For the British tennis player, see Sean Seymour-Cole.

Sean Cole (born November 19, 1971) is an American journalist and poet. He is a producer for the radio show and podcast This American Life.

Sean Cole
Born	(1971-11-19) November 19, 1971 (age 53)
Alma mater	Marlboro College
Years active	1997–Present
Employer	WNYC

Early life

Cole is from the Boston area.^[1] He grew up in the Unitarian Church.^[2] In episode 660 of This American Life, "Hoaxing Yourself," Cole recounted how he spoke with an affected British accent from ages 14 to 16, a habit that sprang from his fondness for British programs like Doctor Who and Dempsey and Makepeace.^[3]

He attended Marlboro College in Vermont, graduating in 1993.^[4]

Career

Cole's career in radio began in 1997 with an internship at the Boston NPR affiliate WBUR.^[2] He went on to work there for nine years as a news-writer, engineer, announcer, field-producer, reporter and, finally, a correspondent for the documentary series Inside Out.^[5] From 2006 to 2011, he was a contract reporter for American Public Media's Marketplace^[6] and, briefly, a senior reporter for Weekend America.^[7] He then worked as a staff producer for WNYC’s Radiolab^[2] for a year and a half. Cole has also contributed to the NPR programs All Things Considered, Only a Game,^[8] and the podcast 99% Invisible among other shows. From mid-2011 through 2013, he was a regular guest host for The Story with Dick Gordon out of WUNC in North Carolina.^[9]

Cole became a contributor at This American Life in 1999, and then joined the staff in 2014.^[5] He is currently a Supervising Producer for the show and serves as guest host occasionally.^[10][11]

In 2021, Cole won the Best Documentary: Gold award in the Third Coast / Richard H. Driehaus Foundation Competition for his story "Time Bandit," which was also nominated for a Peabody Award.^[12][13]

Poetry

In May 2022, Cole released the poetry collection After These Messages on Lunar Chandelier press.^[14] He's also the author of the chapbook Itty City (Pressed Wafer, 2003)^[15] and other chapbooks. In the anthology, Starting Today: 100 Poems for Obama's First 100 Days, Cole's was day 95.^[16] His poem "To Acropolis" was included in a collection of art and writing to benefit victims of the Boston Marathon bombing. In a review, Audrey Mardavich called Cole "a superb thinker: he can be irreverent when it matters most, he is inventive with his images and sounds, he is very funny".^[1]

In 2019, Marlboro College awarded Cole an honorary doctorate in humane letters.^[17]

Bibliography

• Itty City (Pressed Wafer, 2003)
• The December Project (Boog Literature, 2005)
• One Train (Dusie, 2012)
• After These Messages (Lunar Chandelier, 2022)

Selected poems

• "Union Street" and "Gansett Point"^[18]
• "From the February Sonnets"^[19]
• "March 18, 2020" and "March 22, 2020"^[20]
• "Show"^[21]
• "five"—co-written with David Kirschenbaum^[22]
• "From the States Project"—co-written with David Kirschenbaum^[23]