WAMU 88.5 Contributors

Rebecca Sheir

Host, Metro Connection

Sheir joined WAMU in 2009 as a news anchor, host and reporter. She became the host of Metro Connection in August 2010.

Sheir came to the nation's capital by way of Alaska, where she traveled amongst the moose and mountains as the host of AK, the award-winning show on the Alaska Public Radio Network. While in the Last Frontier, she also did reporting for NPR member station KTOO in Juneau.

Sheir's radio stories have won numerous awards – including the Third Coast International Audio Festival Directors' Choice Award – and have aired on public radio venues and programs, including All Things Considered, Weekend Edition, Marketplace, The Splendid Table, Latino USA, Only a Game, Here & Now, Interfaith Voices, Voice of America, Chicago Public Radio, New Hampshire Public Radio and Iowa Public Radio. She has taught her original radio essay/commentary course, "Radio Voices," at the University of Iowa and University of Alaska Anchorage.

Sheir received her BA from Columbia University in New York City, where she also worked in Off-Broadway theater production: first with Stephen Sondheim's Young Playwrights Inc., then with Naked Angels Theatre Company. She holds an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from the University of Iowa.


Articles Written by Rebecca Sheir

WAMU 88.5
When Al Welsh was born in Russia in 1881, no on had yet figured out how to fly an airplane. Welsh couldn't have known it then, but after moving to Washington, D.C., he would go on to be a protégée of Wilbur and Orville Wright, and one of the world's first pilots. Emily Friedman uncovers the story of the first Jewish aviator, what compelled him to take flight and how his friendship with...
WAMU 88.5
We'll revisit our profile of Jaylee Mead, a top contributor to the D.C. theater scene, who died in September at the age of 83. Dr. Mead, a retired NASA astronomer, was a patron, board member and dedicated friend of the Washington theater and arts community for more than 25 years. Members of the theater community say her generosity — including a $35 million gift to Arena Stage — h...
WAMU 88.5
James Higden can hardly contain his excitement. He's a resident at Central Union Mission, a shelter and social service agency in Washington, D.C. He's excited because his home is undergoing a reconstruction. "It's almost like waiting for Christmas," he says, "to know that they're going to have all these additional services, they're going to be in an area that's more centrally ...
WAMU 88.5
In this age of political TV ads, robocalls and email blasts, some may be surprised to find good old-fashioned campaign snail-mail arriving in their mailboxes. But Andrew Kennedy, president and founder of the D.C.-based political direct-mail operation Kennedy Communications, says he believes direct mail is here to stay. Though the term he and his colleagues in the industry pref...
WAMU 88.5
Local dialysis centers opened a little late today due to ramifications of Hurricane Sandy, but they've taken precautions to make sure patients receive the assistance they need in the midst of the storm. The Howard University Dialysis Center opened at noon today and will stay open later in order to accommodate those who would have had a hard time getting to the hospital early i...
WAMU 88.5
If you've wandered past the imposing Victorian mansion on New Hampshire Avenue NW near O Street, you may very well have assumed the chocolate-brick building is bursting with ghost stories galore. But those in the know will tell you: it just isn't true. The house, known by many as The Brewmaster's Castle, was built by German-born beer magnate Christian Heurich. Heurich'...
WAMU 88.5
"I think it is a ghost or a haunting spirit that chooses to stay here." "A lot of times I say, 'Okay, I can tell that you're here. As long as you're nice, you can stay!'" "The whole time I'm here I get creeped out because it just feels like somebody is watching you." All of the above statements have been made about a particular building in Hume, Va., a town in ...
WAMU 88.5
Washington Improv Theater's quadrennial send-up of the American presidential election cycle, POTUS Among Us, began in 2004. And WIT's artistic and executive director Mark Chalfant says everyone was sad to see that production draw to a close. "It's really the kind of show that's only enjoyable when we're really in the thick of the campaign," he says. "Once this is over...
WAMU 88.5
When it comes to moving around, many of us rely on our eyes and our ears. As Gallaudet University's Robert Sirvage explains, "Hearing people can hear what's occurring behind them. So deaf people are taking advantage of other cues to what's happening in their space." Sirvage, who is deaf, holds two positions at Gallaudet: one in the Deaf Studies Department, and the other, in th...
WAMU 88.5
Studio Theatre's next show is called Dirt. But, says artistic director David Muse, it isn't easy to get the dirt on Bryony Lavery's brand new play. "It's a little hard to just encapsulate in a sentence or two," says Muse, who's directing the drama. "But it has something to do with dirt, and and dirt in many forms. Like dirt as soil. Dirt as the results of decompositio...
WAMU 88.5
When Akos Veisz left Hungary last year to work at the Embassy of Hungary in Washington, D.C., the longtime saxophonist discovered something quite surprising about his new colleagues: many of them dabbled in music. “We had a drum, we had a guitar player, we had a piano player, but not bass player, and so I’ve decided to learn the bass.” Since then, the band has go...
WAMU 88.5
According to the American Foreign Service Association (AFSA), the union representing members of the foreign service, roughly 13,000 individuals are involved in overseas diplomacy, at 260-plus U.S. diplomatic missions around the world. Since 1980, AFSA president Susan Johnson has served at a number of those missions, from Havana, Mauritius and Moscow to Romania, Iraq and Bosnia...
WAMU 88.5
If you've wandered down 10th Street NW in Washington, D.C., you may have noticed a rather peculiar break in the block's row houses. Where 1225 and 1227 should stand, there's a long, narrow tract of land, with a historic carriage house in the very back. Anna and Dan Kahoe, who own Good Wood on U Street NW, live in the carriage house. And one day, not too long ago, historic-pres...
WAMU 88.5
With so few homes for sale in the D.C. region, and with such high sale prices, could the D.C. region be seeing a return of the housing bubble? This year, the number of houses on the market is two-thirds what it was last year, and about half of what we had in 2008. As a result, prices are up, and the number of days a house stays on the market is down. Samia Patel, who b...
WAMU 88.5
At the Northwest D.C. residence of Blaise Chérif, the Ambassador of the Republic of Guinea, his chef, Nestor Lamah, is presenting a table arrayed with traditional Guinean dishes. "This is cassava leaves," Lamah says, pointing to a bowl filled with dark green chopped leaves. "And this is Sauce d'arrachide ou Kansiyé and Konkoé here, smoked fish." Chérif says Guinea'...
WAMU 88.5
Andrew White has been called a lot of things in his time: "Saxophoniac," "Baronet Saxophonist," "Mister Vocalese Buzz," Droobie Drooroo Rambo Sax," "Saxophonic Eboniac," "Slide Saxophonist," "Zorro Sax" and "Chicken Alto," among others. But you can also call the 70-year-old D.C. native an author, transcriber, improviser, composer, producer and ever-enterprising entrepreneur....
WAMU 88.5
A top contributor to Washington, D.C.'s artistic transformation has died. Retired NASA astronomer Dr. Jaylee Mead was a patron, board member and dedicated friend of the Washington theater and arts community for more than 25 years. Numerous theater spaces are named for the petite North Carolinian and her late husband, Gilbert Mead, including Arena Stage at The Mead Cent...
WAMU 88.5
Northeast D.C. resident Cori Bryant is about to launch a new business: a breakfast, lunch and late-night food truck, with a vintage/retro/1940s theme, called "Pinup Panini." Though Bryant has spent years working in the food industry — for everyone from Disney to Hard Rock Café to Potbelly to Open City -- she didn't know the first thing about food trucks when she hatched th...
WAMU 88.5
In a packed classroom in Howard University's Locke Hall, Dr. Arti Mehta is teaching students about city-states, in a course called "Cultures of the Ancient Mediterranean." "What is it that makes a city-state?" she asks. "I think it comes down to the independence," a student answers. "And also perhaps to its location and like the villages around it and things like that?...
WAMU 88.5
REALS, the world-premiere play now running at the H Street Playhouse, explores real-life superheroes: everyday folks who set out to make the world a better place, with the help of costumes and nicknames. But these costumed, nicknamed heroes weren't something playwright Gwydion Suilebhan dreamed up for his show. "There really are hundreds of people around the c...