Laura Joyce Davis // writer & host
A Minneapolis native who now calls Oakland home, Laura Joyce Davis is an award-winning fiction writer, a Fulbright scholar, a WNYC Podcast Accelerator finalist, and a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee. She's been featured in interviews with Mind of a Mentor, Jump Start Your Joy, 2 Lives, The Pod Broads, Future Hindsight, @Sea, Emerging Form , Out There, and elsewhere.
She’s also a mom of three young kids who believe that anything is possible if you have a cape, a crown, and a very good book (she doesn’t disagree). In past lives she’s been a collegiate running coach, a Big Ten athlete, an award-winning a cappella singer, and a blue ribbon winner at the 4-H county fair. Both at Shelter in Place and in Laura’s past writing are grounded in the conviction that changing our communities begins with changing ourselves. Laura’s full bio
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Tish Ambal
SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGER
• Helps female podcasters shine on social media
• Based in Cebu, Philippines (home of the best mangoes on earth!)
• Corporate 9-5 escapee
• Mantra-sharer, encouragement-giver, goal-setter -
Melissa Lent
PROJECT MANAGERintensive
• Winter 2021 intensive training program grad
• Co-writer and main VoiceOver for “hyphenated identity”
• Writer and host, Tired in My Twenties podcast
• Polyglot, Notion nerd, native New Yorker -
Sarah Edgell
DESIGN DIRECTOR
• Omnivorous visual career spanning painting, ceramics, interior, textile, graphic, & web design
• Major clients include Denver Symphony, Mizel Museum, Babi Yar Park, and ColonTown
• Chief hiker, cheerful dissenter, ceramic maker, chihuahua handler -
Nate Davis
CREATIVE DIRECTOR
• 15-year advertising survivor with occasional writing awards
• In-house writing experience from construction to insurance to tech
• Story editor, podcast course instructor, r/narrativepodcasts mod, road biker, Covid-mullet-grower
A standout narrative nonfiction podcasting team
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W3 Awards // silver, best scriptwriting
A beautiful bicultural story of how you have to leave home to find it, our episode “Dancing saved my life” earned a silver award in the “best scriptwriting” category amongst 3,000+ entries in this digital media award show in its 17th year.
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Stanford Storytelling Project
In addition to teaching online at Narrative Podcasts, Laura also teaches podcasting in person at the Stanford Storytelling Project. They explore “how we live in and through stories and, even more importantly, how to deepen our lives through our own storytelling.”
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Podcast Magazine // 2022 top influencers
Editors said of the list — mostly household names and big execs — “Whether inspiring, informing, and/or entertaining, each has made unique and powerful contributions to the medium.” A great vote for indie storytelling!
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Social Impact Awards // winner
The Social Impact Awards honor communicators who better their community and the global community at large. Our Kasama Collective training program won for mentorship and organizational mission.
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International Women's Podcast Awards // winner
Our episode “An Affront to Zeus” won the category “Changing the World a moment at a time.” The show, from Skylark Collective, attracted hundreds of entries from 13 countries. See the short award announcement video below:
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Golden Crane Awards // honorable mention
Our April episode “Hyphenated identity” won an honorable mention in the “best stories reflecting the Asian experience” category for the 2021 awards, hosted by the Asian-American Podcasting Association.
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Descript "Studio Sound" contest // finalist
Laura’s sample video showing how she used Descript’s new Studio Sound feature to improve a clip is a finalist in this contest. Descript is an advanced audio-to-text editing tool which we use to create every single episode of Shelter in Place!
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WNYC podcast accelerator // finalist
Laura’s first podcasting project, “Misinformed,” was a finalist for the 2019 accelerator contest, held at the Werk It! podcasting conference in Los Angeles. Judges were from WNYC, one of the country’s premier public radio stations.
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Radio-Mercury Awards // winner
While in advertising portfolio school, Nate won the student category of this nationwide radio contest with his 60-second spot promoting recycling, “Can Karma.”
The stories behind each season of Shelter in Place
Season three: the search for home
After returning from our pandemic Odyssey in August 2021, we’ve found the answer that Oakland still feels like home — but bigger questions remain: how do we not go back to normal, or defeatedly accept a “new normal,” but work toward a better normal?
How do we embrace the journey in a world forever changed?
In a time when the term “post-pandemic” keeps receding into the future, can we escape not out of life — but into it?
Season two: pandemic Odyssey
For centuries, California has been a magnet for adventurers and dreamers, artists and writers — for people like us.
Yet today, many Californians are questioning their future here. After living in Oakland for 16 years, the combination of COVID, Zoom school, and wildfires pushed us to migrate.
Many whose life has been overturned by the pandemic will relate to our struggle — yet our response was not simply to flee, but to create. Narrated by Laura, Shelter in Place is the podcast that follows our travels — physical and emotional — through the pandemic.
To be alive right now means to be confronted with life's toughest questions, all at once: what does it mean to be human? How do we connect with others? And how do we create a better tomorrow? Through open-hearted storytelling and with an inviting voice, Laura Joyce Davis gives us the agency to face the day, with a friend.
Season one: “finding sanity in a world that feels increasingly insane.”
This was the theme line that emerged early on, when “shelter in place” was a new term for the pandemic quarantine that prompted Laura to start the podcast. As we grappled with how to cope with this strange new stage of life, we were inspired to try to define sanity for ourselves — with twelve themes that still act as touchstones for our show that began as a Covid time capsule, but grew into an award-winning narrative nonfiction podcast, two training programs, and our life’s work. We wrote these words almost 18 months ago, but they still reflect how we approach the podcast, the training programs, and life.
(To hear Laura read the full version, listen to episode 70, Redefining Sanity.)
What sanity means to us: a manifesto
Authenticity
To be sane is to be genuine. This is my defining trait that either draws people in, or pushes them away. Nothing says “love” to me like someone seeing me at my worst, and sticking around anyway.
Browse episodes about authenticity
Creativity
To be sane is to create, a way to salvage beauty from our pain. For me, it’s often writing, but it can be building a business, a bookshelf, or a family. Creativity can teach us how to move from curiosity instead of striving for perfection.
Browse episodes about creativity
Hope
To be sane is to have persistent hope for a better future. Not mere fanciful dreaming, it’s a long look at reality that acknowledges pain, suffering, or injustice, but choosing to bend toward hope.
Rest
To be sane is to rest. Many of us have lost jobs, cancelled travel, and cleared schedules--and yet true rest remains elusive. Our challenges is finding rest for ourselves and our planet, even in a turbulent time.
Community
To be sane is to be together. Real friendships help us to accept and reframe our ugliest parts as beautiful. They extend to us the grace we need to extend to ourselves.
Browse episodes about community
Faith
To be sane is to have faith in something. Whether it’s the whisper of the wind through the trees, or the breath of a prayer when we long to be found, faith reminds us that we matter, that our lives can be a gift to others.
Lament
To be sane is to experience the fullness of humanity, pausing life’s pace, acknowledging what has been lost, and grieving it in its due. There is a time for action, and a time to sit with the truth that things are not as they should be.
Safety
To be sane is to be safe: if we aren’t, we can’t be creative, can’t laugh, can’t hope. Many of us do not feel safe, so my daily search for sanity envisions a safer world for all, and a provides a safe place for us to grow together.
Courage
To be sane is to face the hard things, with family, friends, or society. It’s having the humility to admit our wrongs, and then choosing to repair them, personally and globally.
Growth
To be sane means moving toward a more sustainable existence, and learning to balance progress with self-acceptance. It means doing the hard work of transformation out in the world even as you do it in yourself.
Laughter
To be sane is to laugh. Laughter is a necessary release valve from grief, an invitation to silliness, a gift of levity, of delight. Laughter recalls a childlike surprise at the world, and often, we have to go looking for it.
Browse episodes about laughter
Touch
During this time of quarantine, we no longer take for granted handshakes and hugs from friends. Moving forward, we need to find tangible connections without endangering each other’s health and well-being.
What listeners are saying
“Laura has the most eloquent yet down to earth way to tell her stories. I close my eyes and just listen.”
— CabbyB105 on Apple Podcasts. Leave your review (scroll down below episodes).
“An uplifting fusion of art and honesty, full of insights into our strange cultural moment.”
— jsk75gate on Apple Podcasts
Narrative Podcasts workshops
Would you like to make your own podcast like Shelter in Place but aren’t sure where to start? Or maybe you have some audio or podcasting experience, but want to boost your scriptwriting, narration, or sound design skills? Our one day workshops are for you.
Each two-hour Saturday session features insider insights from our award-winning shows, tutorials, examples, live exercises, feedback, and Q & A. You’ll finish each workshop with real practice, increased confidence, additional resources, and inspiration from committed peers.