In 1977, David Ray and his wife, Judy, began the audio literature program New Letters on the Air, a half-hour radio program featuring writers reading from and talking about their work. For 13 years, Rebekah Presson produced and hosted the show, a task taken over in 1996 by Angela Elam. 

The program now stands as the longest continuously-running broadcast of a national literary radio series, with more than 1,200 programs by many of the world’s most prominent writers. A 2010 finalist for the New York Festivals International Radio Arts & Culture Award for "The Cruelest Month" a poetry compilation for National Poetry Month, New Letters on the Air has won a 2011 Clarion Award from the Association for Women in Communications for Women's Issues Radio with "When She Named Fire"--a show about women publishing poetry in America-- and a 2013 Clarion Award for Best Radio Talk or Interview Program.