Writers and Radio: How Literary Authors Have Made Use of the Medium over a Century

Literary authors have made use of the radio as a political, technological, cultural, and social medium from its infancy. A wide range of complex relationships can be recognised when looking at their ways of dealing with the medium, of writing for the radio, and of working with radio stations. While a huge body of studies provide rich material of this utilisation, a systematic framework for the analysis of these practices has been glaringly absent. Deduced by a methodological framework we propose a systematisation and typify five clusters of literary practices. Such a systematic overview provides insights into the nature of the alliances and helps to understand the role of literary authors in radio cultures and their contribution to the culture of radio in the so-called ‘radio century’.