Story by Marc Glass, Photo by Dan Bailey (Winter 2008 issue)

Peter Biello ’05 doesn’t often hear the sound of his own success: “For NPR news, I’m Peter Biello in Wilmington, North Carolina.” But loyal listeners to National Public Radio have heard the silver-tongued alum close his broadcast news stories just this way.

It’s not that Biello is bashful about hearing his New Hanover County-based reporting for NPR affiliate WHQR-91.3FM. He just never knows when it gets picked up by NPR’s national broadcasts. “They air it whenever they want, sometimes really early in the morning on Saturdays or overnight,” said Biello, who did manage to catch his NPR Day to Day piece “Cybertracker Hunts Terrorist Videos Online” in late October. Biello’s story follows a day in the life of an Arabic speaking South Carolina mom, who developed software to locate jihadist videos posted online. (Under the pseudonym “Laura Mansfield,” she apprises government officials and academics alike with her Website, www.lauramansfield.com.)

Biello, who majored in creating writing at UMF and is now completing his MFA degree in creative writing at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, has a one-year graduate internship with WHQR through mid-May. His segments for a 10-part series on affordable housing include a piece on a Wilmington police officer forced by the city’s “exorbitant housing prices” to commute 100 miles daily. Another of his reports chronicles how the addition of a sewer line changed life for a couple living on a once sleepy stretch of rural road.

It’s a job, Biello says, that keeps him connected to the community. “I never knew what a revenue-neutral tax rate was until I had to ask county commissioners about it for a story,” he said. “I never knew what a county commissioner had the power to do until I took a job like this. It’s an education that’s so relevant and useful.”

Biello had no formal radio journalism training, but was able to submit a broadcast-ready feature story when he applied for the internship—all because of a radio essay assignment he completed in a creative nonfiction course taught by Gretchen Legler, professor of creative writing. He taught himself to use industry-standard audio editing software and produced a five-minute segment, featuring interviews with visiting French exchange students. Although he said the piece had some very “un-NPR” qualities, such as background strains of French music and an outcue close of “This is Peter Biello reporting” en français, the piece “really opened the door.”

“Now when I listen to it, it’s sort of painful,” he said with a rueful laugh. “But the project helped me figure out how to use sound, how to write into sound and out of it. One of the people interviewing me actually said that he started his public radio career with less.”

Biello said he hopes to continue working with an NPR affiliate after completing his MFA program. For now, he’s busy writing as many as five stories per week with WHQR, finishing his master’s thesis (a novel, featuring “a lot of lying on the part of the protagonist”) and planning for an August 2008 wedding to fellow UMF creative writing major Mary Hammond ’06.

And what if a work in public radio isn’t in the offing?

“I would love to teach at UMF,” quipped Biello, a former adjunct instructor of creative writing at Brunswick Community College. “I want Pat O’Donnell’s job, teaching fiction. The people at UMF are so intellectually curious. That’s what I miss most about Farmington.”

(Biello’s WHQR broadcasts are available online at www.whqr.org. Just search for “Biello” in the “Local Interest” section.)