Welcome to Night Vale: History and Key Facts

Welcome to Night Vale is an absurdist supernatural fiction podcast created by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor. It is presented as a community radio show in the fictional American desert town of Night Vale, with the eccentric local radio host reporting on the bizarre and unnatural events that occur within it. The podcast stars Cecil Baldwin as radio host Cecil Gershwin Palmer, and occasionally features guest voices as secondary characters, including Dylan Marron, Jasika Nicole, Mara Wilson and Jackson Publick.

Night Vale originated as a production of the collaborative writing project Commonplace Books in 2012. After their success, the creators launched a podcast network in 2015 entitled Night Vale Presents which continues to produce the show among others. The show has on occasion featured guest writers, particularly Brie Williams who has written a number of episodes. The cast also performs live shows in various venues, many of which have been released online as audio recordings.

The podcast has garnered a cult following and critical acclaim for its surreal humor and horror, and LGBTQ+ representation. Fink and Cranor have written three novels set in the podcast's universe: Welcome to Night Vale (2015), It Devours! (2017) and The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your Home (2020). Additionally, the Night Vale staff went on to produce original podcasts through the Night Vale Presents network, such as Alice Isn't Dead (2016–18).

Source and attribution

Text excerpted from Welcome to Night Vale by Wikipedia contributors, available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0. The extract is abridged and formatting has been adjusted; the adapted text on this page is shared under the same licence. Revision history.