How to Cite an Interview in Chicago Style
Chicago cites the interviewee, not the host. A published or broadcast interview follows the article, program, or book that holds it; an interview you conducted stays in a note or parenthesis because readers cannot retrieve it. This guide follows the Chicago Manual of Style, 18th edition (2024), §§14.108–14.111, plus the live Notes-Bibliography and Author-Date Quick Guide samples opened on 16 September 2026. It is the Chicago interview page, not the APA interview, MLA interview, or cross-style personal-communications tutorial.
By CitationEasy Editorial Team25 min read
On this page
How to Cite an Interview in Chicago: Quick Answer
Start with the person whose words you used. Then ask whether a reader who is not you can open the same file. If the interview ran in a magazine, journal, newspaper, podcast, radio program, or book, cite that container and add "interview by" plus the interviewer. If you conducted it, or if it exists only as a private recording, put the citation in a footnote or parenthesis and leave it out of the bibliography unless a public archive holds a transcript. That recoverability split is the whole Chicago interview rule.
CMOS 18 interview templates
Notes-Bibliography first note:
First Name Last Name, "Title of Interview," interview by Interviewer Name, Publication, Month Day, Year, locator or URL.
Notes-Bibliography shortened note:
Last Name, "Short Title," locator.
Notes-Bibliography bibliography:
Last Name, First Name. "Title of Interview." Interview by Interviewer Name. Publication, Month Day, Year. URL.
Author-Date in-text:
(Last Name Year)
Author-Date reference:
Last Name, First Name. Year. "Title of Interview." Interview by Interviewer Name. Publication, Month Day. URL.
Unpublished interview you conducted (note only):
First Name Last Name, interview by author, Place, Month Day, Year.
Official CMOS 18 Quick Guide wording
Chicago-Style Citation Quick Guide
Interviews are usually cited under the name of the interviewee rather than the interviewer.
Notes and Bibliography sample citations
Personal communications, including email and text messages and direct messages sent through social media, are usually cited in the text or in a note only; they are rarely included in a bibliography.
Author-Date sample citations
Personal communications, including email and text messages and direct messages sent through social media, are usually cited in the text only; they are rarely included in a reference list.
Those three sentences are still on the official Notes and Bibliography sample citations page and the matching Author-Date samples page, both opened on 16 September 2026. The Chicago-Style Citation Quick Guide is the public entry point; chapters 13 and 14 of the subscribed manual have the full examples. University reprints that restated the same 18th-edition map on that date include the University of Lethbridge CMOS 18 interview page (last updated 13 August 2026, §§14.108–14.111) and Notre Dame Australia's Chicago interviews page (published interviews at 14.110, unpublished at 14.108, anonymous at 14.109, personal communications at 14.111). The atomic how-to-cite page shows one formatted interview; this guide is the workflow around it: published versus unpublished, notes versus author-date, and when an archive turns a private conversation into a locatable source.
Official CMOS Sample: Joy Buolamwini on Fresh Air
The live 18th-edition Quick Guide interview sample, still pointed at CMOS §§14.108, 14.109, and 14.110 on 16 September 2026, is computer scientist Joy Buolamwini's 28 November 2023 appearance on NPR's Fresh Air with Tonya Mosley. The NPR page still uses the headline 'If You Have a Face, You Have a Place in the Conversation About AI,' Expert Says, credits Mosley, and lists the runtime as 37:58. The segment discusses her book Unmasking AI. Copy this form when you listened to the NPR file. Do not use it for a later YouTube clip, a documentary excerpt, or a different interview about the same book.
CMOS Quick Guide interview sample (opened 16 September 2026)
First note:
1. Joy Buolamwini, " 'If You Have a Face, You Have a Place in the Conversation About AI,' Expert Says," interview by Tonya Mosley, Fresh Air, NPR, November 28, 2023, audio, 37:58, https://www.npr.org/2023/11/28/1215529902/unmasking-ai-facial-recognition-technology-joy-buolamwini.
Shortened note:
2. Buolamwini, interview.
Bibliography:
Buolamwini, Joy. " 'If You Have a Face, You Have a Place in the Conversation About AI,' Expert Says." Interview by Tonya Mosley. Fresh Air, NPR, November 28, 2023. Audio, 37:58. https://www.npr.org/2023/11/28/1215529902/unmasking-ai-facial-recognition-technology-joy-buolamwini.
Author-Date in-text:
(Buolamwini 2023)
Author-Date reference:
Buolamwini, Joy. 2023. " 'If You Have a Face, You Have a Place in the Conversation About AI,' Expert Says." Interview by Tonya Mosley. Fresh Air, NPR, November 28. Audio, 37:58. https://www.npr.org/2023/11/28/1215529902/unmasking-ai-facial-recognition-technology-joy-buolamwini.
The live Quick Guide puts a space after the opening quotation mark because the title itself begins with a quotation. Keep that space if you are copying the official sample. The note uses lowercase "audio"; the bibliography and reference-list lines capitalize "Audio." The shortened note is Buolamwini, interview — not ibid., and not Mosley's name. If you quote a timestamp, CMOS's multimedia Quick Guide uses a locator such as "at 6:09–17" after the citation; apply that pattern to the NPR file you actually played, not to a re-encoded clip with different timing.
Chicago 18th Edition, Not 17th
The current manual is the 18th edition, published by the University of Chicago Press in September 2024. Interview rules now sit at CMOS 14.108–14.110. Personal communications, including email and private messages, are at CMOS 14.111. Older handouts still cite 17th-edition paragraphs 14.211–14.214. The substance is the same; the section numbers are not. If an assignment does not name an edition, use CMOS 18. Turabian 9th edition is still the live student handbook built on Chicago; Turabian 10 has been announced, but classroom handouts that still say "Turabian" almost always mean the 9th-edition interview pattern, which follows the same interviewee-first and unpublished-in-notes rules.
Two other 18th-edition changes affect interview citations that live inside books. CMOS 14.30 no longer requires a place of publication for books published in or after 1900. CMOS 14.8 no longer requires a chapter page range in the bibliography, though a note may still cite the page you quote. CMOS 18 also prefers shortened notes over ibid. See ibid and shortened note.
| Source type | CMOS 18 section | Usually in bibliography? |
|---|---|---|
| Published or broadcast interview | 14.108, 14.110 | Yes |
| Unpublished interview, including many oral histories | 14.108, 14.109 | Only if readers can locate a transcript or recording |
| Anonymous or confidential interview | 14.109 | Almost never |
| Email, text, or private message | 14.111 | Rarely |
The Three Kinds of Interview Chicago Cares About
Students often treat every conversation as a "personal interview." Chicago does not. Publication status and recoverability decide the format. A primary source interview can still be unpublished. A published Q&A in a journal is not a personal communication. An oral-history tape in a university archive is unpublished in the magazine sense, but it is locatable, so it can take a fuller citation than a Zoom call you ran last week. Purdue OWL's CMOS 18 interview page restates the same split: unpublished interviews and personal communications are best cited in notes rather than in the bibliography; published interviews follow the periodical or book-chapter pattern.
| What you used | Chicago pattern | Worked example in this guide |
|---|---|---|
| Magazine, newspaper, journal, radio, podcast, or book Q&A | Published or broadcast interview | Buolamwini on Fresh Air; Coetzee in Contemporary Literature |
| Interview you conducted; private email or call | Unpublished interview or personal communication | CMOS Quick Guide Gomez message; labelled templates for fieldwork |
| Archived oral history with a collection and repository | Unpublished interview with location data | Spock at the National Library of Medicine; Parks at Washington University |
Published or broadcast
- Treat it as the container: article, program, or book
- Interviewee comes first in the note and the bibliography
- Add "interview by" and the interviewer's name
- Include a DOI or URL for online interviews
- Use a shortened note after the first full citation
Unpublished or personal
- Cite in a note (notes-bibliography) or in the text (author-date)
- Usually omit the bibliography or reference-list entry
- Name both people, the medium if it matters, and the date
- Add a repository only when a transcript is publicly held
- Get permission before you quote a private conversation
Notes-Bibliography: Published and Broadcast Interviews
History, art history, religion, and most humanities papers use the notes-bibliography system. The first note is complete. Later notes use a short form. The bibliography repeats the source with the interviewee's name inverted. See the Chicago notes-bibliography style page and the Chicago cheat sheet.
If the interview has no separate title, drop the quoted title and keep "interview by." If the interviewee's name is already in the title, CMOS lets the note begin with the title, but the bibliography still begins with the interviewee. When a journal title, volume, and issue are present, follow the journal pattern rather than inventing a magazine date.
Journal interview with a DOI
A scholarly interview is still a journal article. Keep volume, issue, year, page range, and a DOI when one exists. J. M. Coetzee's conversation with Richard Begam in Contemporary Literature is a real article: volume 33, number 3, Autumn 1992, pages 419–431, DOI 10.2307/1208476. JSTOR still lists it under that DOI. CMOS lets the note start with the title because the interviewee is named there; the bibliography still opens with Coetzee.
First note:
3. "An Interview with J. M. Coetzee," interview by Richard Begam, Contemporary Literature 33, no. 3 (Autumn 1992): 425, https://doi.org/10.2307/1208476.
Shortened note:
4. Coetzee, "Interview with J. M. Coetzee," 427.
Bibliography:
Coetzee, J. M. "An Interview with J. M. Coetzee." Interview by Richard Begam. Contemporary Literature 33, no. 3 (Autumn 1992): 419–431. https://doi.org/10.2307/1208476.
Magazine or web interview
Zia Jaffrey's Salon conversation with Toni Morrison still resolves at the 2 February 1998 permalink and still carries Jaffrey's byline. The page I opened is titled The Salon Interview and discusses Paradise. Jaffrey—not Claudia Brodsky Lacour—was the interviewer. A 16 February date is a different, incorrect source. Cite a web magazine like a news article: interviewee, title, interviewer, site or magazine name, date, URL. For print newspapers and magazines without a URL, see How to Cite a Newspaper Article in Chicago Style and How to Cite Magazine and Newspaper Articles in Chicago Style.
First note:
5. Toni Morrison, "The Salon Interview," interview by Zia Jaffrey, Salon, February 2, 1998, https://www.salon.com/1998/02/02/cov_si_02int/.
Shortened note:
6. Morrison, "Salon Interview."
Bibliography:
Morrison, Toni. "The Salon Interview." Interview by Zia Jaffrey. Salon, February 2, 1998. https://www.salon.com/1998/02/02/cov_si_02int/.
Literary quarterly interview
The Paris Review "Art of Fiction" series is a periodical interview, not a book chapter. Morrison's conversation with Elissa Schappell and Claudia Brodsky Lacour is "The Art of Fiction No. 134," issue 128, Fall 1993. The Paris Review page still lists both interviewers and that issue. Use it when you need a print-quarterly model rather than a news site. Do not move Lacour from this interview onto the Salon byline.
First note:
7. Toni Morrison, "The Art of Fiction No. 134," interview by Elissa Schappell and Claudia Brodsky Lacour, Paris Review, no. 128 (Fall 1993), https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/1888/the-art-of-fiction-no-134-toni-morrison.
Bibliography:
Morrison, Toni. "The Art of Fiction No. 134." Interview by Elissa Schappell and Claudia Brodsky Lacour. Paris Review, no. 128 (Fall 1993). https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/1888/the-art-of-fiction-no-134-toni-morrison.
Interview reprinted in a book
When a conversation is collected in a book, cite the interviewee, the interviewer, the book title, the editor, the publisher, and the year. CMOS 18 drops the city for a 1989 university-press book. Conversations with James Baldwin, edited by Fred L. Standley and Louis H. Pratt (University Press of Mississippi, 1989), reprints Studs Terkel's interview among twenty-seven conversations. Library catalogs and the book's own title page use Fred L. Standley; the press marketing page that says Fred R. Standley is not the name to copy. Do not invent a page span you have not seen. If you quote a specific page, put that page in the note only.
First note:
8. James Baldwin, interview by Studs Terkel, in Conversations with James Baldwin, ed. Fred L. Standley and Louis H. Pratt (University Press of Mississippi, 1989).
Bibliography:
Baldwin, James. Interview by Studs Terkel. In Conversations with James Baldwin, edited by Fred L. Standley and Louis H. Pratt. University Press of Mississippi, 1989.
Notes-Bibliography: Unpublished Interviews and Personal Communications
Chicago's public Q&A still gives the cleanest unpublished-interview rule. The wording below is from CMOS Q&A: How would one cite an interview?, opened on 16 September 2026. The page still carries a 17th-edition banner; CMOS 18 restates the same elements at 14.108–14.109.
Official CMOS wording on unpublished interviews
Unpublished interviews are best cited in text or in notes, though they occasionally appear in bibliographies. Citations should include the names of both the person interviewed and the interviewer; brief identifying information, if appropriate; the place or date of the interview (or both, if known); and, if a transcript or recording is available, where it may be found. Permission to quote may be needed; see chapter 4.
Interviews you conducted
If you are the interviewer, write "interview by author" (or "in discussion with the author"). Name the place when the meeting was in person. Name the medium—phone, Zoom, email—when that fact helps a reader judge the source. The names below are templates, not real people. Do not put a private interview in the bibliography unless your instructor requires a list of fieldwork. University teaching examples that use fictional speakers such as Jean-Luc Picard are labelled as classroom jokes, not sources to copy into a paper.
In-person (template):
9. First Name Last Name (high-school history teacher), interview by author, Chicago, March 15, 2025.
Phone or video (template):
10. First Name Last Name, phone interview by author, January 20, 2025.
Shortened later note:
11. Last Name, interview.
Email, texts, and other personal communications
A one-off email or private message is not an interview series. CMOS 14.111 tells you to cite it in the note or the sentence and to skip the bibliography. The live Quick Guide's own notes-bibliography sample, still on the page on 16 September 2026, is Sam Gomez's Facebook message. CMOS writes "e-mail message to author" for email. Omit the correspondent's email address unless you have a specific reason and their permission. For the cross-style version of this rule, see How to Cite Personal Communications and Emails.
Official CMOS 18 §14.111 personal-communication sample
Notes-Bibliography note:
12. Sam Gomez, Facebook direct message to author, August 1, 2024.
Author-Date in-text:
(Sam Gomez, Facebook direct message to author, August 1, 2024)
Email note (template):
13. First Name Last Name, e-mail message to author, December 10, 2024.
Anonymous or confidential interviewees
CMOS 14.109 covers people who cannot be named. Use a descriptive label, explain the confidentiality agreement in the prose or a discursive note, and do not leak identifying details in the surrounding paragraph. These notes almost never become bibliography entries. Purdue OWL's CMOS 18 restatement allows a label such as "anonymous informant #3" only when the text also explains why the name is withheld.
Note (template):
14. Interview with a hospital social worker, New York, January 10, 2025.
Explain in the text that interviews were confidential and that names are withheld by agreement.
More than one interview with the same person
Give each conversation its own note with its own date and medium. If you must list fieldwork in a bibliography, combine the dates on one line rather than inventing a single fictional session.
Notes (template):
15. First Name Last Name, interview by author, Chicago, March 15, 2025.
16. First Name Last Name, phone interview by author, April 20, 2025.
Oral History Interviews in Archives
An archived oral history is still unpublished in Chicago's sense, but it is retrievable. That is why CMOS's own example includes a collection name, interview number, and repository. Treat the citation like other archival primary sources: enough description that another researcher can request the same tape or transcript. For folder-and-box manuscript patterns, use How to Cite Primary Sources and Archives in Chicago Style and How to Find and Use Archives for Research.
How the Oral History Association defines the method
Oral History Association
Oral history is a field of study and a method of gathering, preserving, and interpreting the voices and memories of people, communities, and participants in past events.
That definition is still the opening sentence of the Oral History Association's "Oral History: Defined" page, opened on 16 September 2026. The Association's core principles require informed consent, respect for narrators, and clear agreements about preservation and access. Citation is the last step, not a substitute for those permissions.
Official CMOS oral-history example
The CMOS Q&A example is Benjamin Spock's 20 November 1974 interview with Milton J. E. Senn, interview 67A, a transcript in the Senn Oral History Collection at the National Library of Medicine in Bethesda, Maryland. Quote this form when you need the manual's own unpublished-interview model. I am repeating the official specimen, not a catalog record I opened: NLM's public discovery layer did not return interview 67A from this runner. Cite the copy you actually requested.
Note:
17. Benjamin Spock, interview by Milton J. E. Senn, November 20, 1974, interview 67A, transcript, Senn Oral History Collection, National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, MD.
Bibliography (optional, because the transcript is locatable):
Spock, Benjamin. Interview by Milton J. E. Senn. November 20, 1974. Interview 67A, transcript. Senn Oral History Collection, National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, MD.
Civil rights oral history with a public URL
Blackside, Inc., recorded Rosa Parks on 14 November 1985 for Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years, 1954–1965. Washington University Libraries' Film and Media Archive holds the tape in the Henry Hampton Collection. The preserved interview runs 35 minutes 35 seconds, not 45 minutes. The Washington University record is Interview with Rosa Parks; that page returned a server error from this runner on 16 September 2026, so also keep the working American Archive of Public Broadcasting record, which credits the same 14 November 1985 date, 00:35:35 runtime, and Washington University Film and Media Archive. Cite the copy you opened. Callie Crossley appears as a contributor on some records; the repository still names Blackside, Inc., as the interview creator, which is the interviewer line to keep.
Note, Washington University record:
18. Rosa Parks, interview by Blackside, Inc., November 14, 1985, video, 35:35, Henry Hampton Collection, Washington University Film and Media Archive, St. Louis, https://repository.wustl.edu/concern/videos/5d86p1921.
Note, AAPB copy:
19. Rosa Parks, interview by Blackside, Inc., November 14, 1985, video, 35:35, Henry Hampton Collection, Washington University Film and Media Archive, St. Louis, https://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-151-610vq2sx12.
Bibliography:
Parks, Rosa. Interview by Blackside, Inc. November 14, 1985. Video, 35:35. Henry Hampton Collection. Washington University Film and Media Archive, St. Louis. https://repository.wustl.edu/concern/videos/5d86p1921.
Multi-session oral history online
Amelia R. Fry interviewed Alice Paul for UC Berkeley's Suffragists Oral History Project in November 1972 and May 1973. The Regional Oral History Office published the transcript in 1976 as Conversations with Alice Paul: Woman Suffrage and the Equal Rights Amendment. The Online Archive of California record I opened still uses ark:/13030/kt6f59n89c and still names Fry as contributor and the Bancroft Library as the holding institution. That is not the unrelated finding-aid ARK sometimes copied into student papers. Project context is still on the Bancroft Library suffragists page.
Note:
20. Alice Paul, interview by Amelia R. Fry, November 1972 and May 1973, transcript, Suffragists Oral History Project, Regional Oral History Office, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, https://oac.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/kt6f59n89c/.
Bibliography:
Paul, Alice. Interview by Amelia R. Fry. November 1972 and May 1973. Transcript. Suffragists Oral History Project. Regional Oral History Office, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. https://oac.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/kt6f59n89c/.
Do Not Cite a Documentary as if It Were Your Interview
If you heard John Lewis or Rosa Parks inside the broadcast film Eyes on the Prize, you are citing a documentary, not conducting an interview. Use the film or episode pattern in How to Cite Multimedia Sources in Chicago Style. Use the oral-history pattern above only when you consulted the archived interview record itself. Mixing the two makes a broadcast compilation look like fieldwork.
Do Not Cite a YouTube Reupload as the NPR Interview
A Fresh Air segment that later appears on YouTube is still the NPR interview only if you actually used that upload and you say so. The official CMOS sample points at the NPR URL, uses "audio, 37:58," and names NPR as the network. A fan upload, a clipped excerpt, or a documentary that quotes Buolamwini is a different container. If the YouTube file is the copy you played, follow the multimedia pattern for a posted video — uploader, platform, runtime of that file — and do not paste the NPR 37:58 figure onto a 12-minute clip. The live CMOS multimedia samples (Cowan TED, Oliver YouTube, Ober podcast) are host-or-speaker pages; they are not interview citations. See How to Cite Multimedia Sources in Chicago Style.
Interview versus Podcast Episode
Chicago's Quick Guide treats Buolamwini as an interview because you are using her words and the page labels the source as an interview. It treats Lauren Ober's The Loudest Girl in the World as a podcast episode because you are citing the hosted show. If your paper is about what the guest said, start with the guest and write "interview by." If your paper is about the episode as a produced program, start with the host and use the multimedia pattern. Do not list Mosley as the author of the Buolamwini citation just because Fresh Air is a show.
Author-Date: Interviews
Social-science papers that specify Chicago usually want the author-date system, not footnotes. The reference list still begins with the interviewee. The year moves next to that name. In-text citations look like (Buolamwini 2023), with no comma after the name and no "p." before a page. See the Chicago author-date style page. Do not mix author-date parentheses with notes-bibliography notes in one paper.
Published interview in author-date
Copy the Quick Guide Buolamwini reference from the official sample above. For a journal interview, keep volume, issue, and the page range in the reference list, and put the page you quote in the parenthesis.
In-text:
(Coetzee 1992, 425)
Reference list:
Coetzee, J. M. 1992. "An Interview with J. M. Coetzee." Interview by Richard Begam. Contemporary Literature 33, no. 3 (Autumn): 419–431. https://doi.org/10.2307/1208476.
Unpublished interview in author-date
Author-date follows the same recoverability test. A private interview or email stays in the sentence or a parenthesis. CMOS 14.111 uses "pers. comm." or a more specific label such as "text message to author." Identify the person in the prose. Do not add a reference-list entry. The live Quick Guide's own author-date sample is still the Gomez Facebook message quoted above.
In-text (template):
(F. Last Name, pers. comm., March 15, 2025)
More specific medium (template):
(F. Last Name, Zoom interview with author, March 15, 2025)
Reference list:
Omit unpublished personal interviews and private messages from the reference list.
Locatable oral history in author-date
When the recording is in a public collection, a reference-list entry is reasonable even though CMOS still prefers a note-first approach for unpublished interviews. Put the year after the interviewee; keep the month and day later in the entry.
In-text:
(Parks 1985)
Reference list:
Parks, Rosa. 1985. Interview by Blackside, Inc. November 14. Video, 35:35. Henry Hampton Collection. Washington University Film and Media Archive, St. Louis. https://repository.wustl.edu/concern/videos/5d86p1921.
Which Chicago System Should You Use?
| Field or assignment | Usual system | Why |
|---|---|---|
| History, biography, oral history | Notes-bibliography | Notes can carry archive location, consent caveats, and commentary |
| Art history, religion, many book manuscripts | Notes-bibliography | Unusual sources fit notes more easily than parentheses |
| Sociology, anthropology, political science | Author-date | Readers expect a year next to the name |
| Student paper using Turabian | Match the instructor | Turabian is the student handbook for Chicago; see Turabian vs Chicago |
The assignment sheet wins over any field default. For the broader style choice, see APA vs Chicago, Which Citation Style Should You Use?, and the history citation guide. APA treats a personal interview as in-text only and often lists the interviewer, not the interviewee, as the reference-list author of a published interview. That is a different rule, covered in How to Cite Interviews in APA Format. MLA 9 uses Works Cited core elements and may list an unpublished interview you conducted; see How to Cite Interviews in MLA Format.
Common Errors in Chicago Interview Citations
Listing the interviewer as the author
The bibliography is alphabetized by the person whose words you used. Mosley hosts Fresh Air; Buolamwini is still the author of that citation. If you listed every NPR host as the author, the interview would disappear under the wrong name.
Putting a private interview in the bibliography
Readers cannot retrieve your Zoom call. Chicago therefore keeps it in the note or parenthesis. Archived oral histories are the exception, and only because a repository can produce the same file.
Copying a 17th-edition book citation, city and all
"Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1989" is a CMOS 17 book imprint. CMOS 18 cites that Baldwin volume as University Press of Mississippi, 1989. Keep the city only for books published before 1900, or when the city is the best identifier you have.
Inventing titles, dates, or page spans
If the interview has no formal title, omit the quoted title. If you have not seen the page, do not guess "pp. 3–23." If a URL looks like a generic slug, open it. The Salon Morrison interview is 2 February 1998 by Zia Jaffrey. A 16 February date and a Lacour byline are a different, incorrect source.
Citing the film when you used the archive tape
The broadcast episode and the raw interview are different objects. The Hampton Collection record for Parks is a 1985 interview element. The 1987 PBS episode is a film. Pick the one you actually watched or read.
Pasting the NPR runtime onto a YouTube clip
The official CMOS sample's 37:58 figure belongs to the NPR file. A reupload that ends at 12:04 is a different object. Cite the runtime of the file you played, or omit the runtime if you do not have it.
Using ibid. for a second interview note
CMOS 18 wants a shortened note: Buolamwini, interview. Ibid. is not forbidden in every classroom, but it is no longer the manual's recommendation, and it becomes ambiguous when two interviews sit on the same page.
Ethics, Consent, and What the Citation Cannot Do
A correctly formatted note does not replace informed consent. If you interview living people for a thesis or article, ask your institution whether the project needs Institutional Review Board review. Keep the consent form, the recording, and the agreed limits on quotation. The Oral History Association principles treat narrator permission as ongoing, not a one-time signature.
Say in the prose—not the citation—why the speaker is qualified and what the recording conditions were. "Interview by author" tells a reader the source is yours. It does not tell them whether the speaker was on the record, whether you translated the conversation, or whether a later email corrected a date. Put those facts in the sentence or in a discursive note.
If you later deposit the interview in an archive, the citation can grow a collection name and a URL. Until then, it stays a personal communication. That is why Chicago's unpublished form is short: it refuses to pretend a private conversation is a publication.
Generate a Chicago interview citation
Use the notes-bibliography or author-date generator for a published interview, then check the interviewee-first order against this guide. Unpublished interviews still need a hand-written note.
Related guides and tools
- How to Cite Primary Sources and Archives in Chicago Style
- How to Cite Multimedia Sources in Chicago Style
- How to Cite Manuscripts and Unpublished Works in Chicago Style
- How to Cite Personal Communications and Emails
- How to Cite Interviews in APA Format
- How to Cite Interviews in MLA Format
- How to Cite an Interview (worked Chicago example)
- Interview citation generator
- Chicago style overview
Frequently asked questions
- How do you cite an interview in Chicago style?
- Cite the interviewee as the author. For a published or broadcast interview, follow the pattern of the article, program, or book and add "interview by" plus the interviewer. For an interview you conducted, use a footnote (notes-bibliography) or a parenthetical citation (author-date) and skip the bibliography unless a public archive holds the recording.
- Do unpublished interviews go in a Chicago bibliography?
- Usually no. CMOS 14.108–14.109 says unpublished interviews are best cited in the text or in notes. Add a bibliography entry only when a transcript or recording is deposited where readers can request it, as with the Spock interview in the National Library of Medicine.
- How do I cite a personal interview I conducted in Chicago?
- In notes-bibliography: First Name Last Name, interview by author, Place, Month Day, Year. In author-date: (F. Last Name, pers. comm., Month Day, Year) or a more specific label such as "Zoom interview with author." Leave it out of the reference list.
- How do you cite an oral history in Chicago style?
- Name the narrator, the interviewer, the date, the interview or catalog number if there is one, whether you used a transcript or audio, the collection, the repository, and a URL when the file is online. CMOS's own model is Benjamin Spock, interview by Milton J. E. Senn, November 20, 1974, interview 67A, transcript, Senn Oral History Collection, National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, MD.
- Is the interviewer or the interviewee listed first?
- The interviewee. The Chicago-Style Citation Quick Guide still says interviews are usually cited under the name of the interviewee rather than the interviewer. "Interview by" introduces the host or scholar who asked the questions.
- How do you cite a podcast or radio interview in Chicago?
- Use the published-interview pattern with the program title in italics, the network, the date, "audio" or "podcast audio," a runtime if you have it, and the URL of the file you played. The live CMOS 18 sample, still on the Quick Guide on 16 September 2026, is Joy Buolamwini, interviewed by Tonya Mosley on Fresh Air, NPR, November 28, 2023.
- What is the difference between Chicago notes and author-date for interviews?
- Notes-bibliography puts the full citation in a numbered footnote or endnote and repeats published interviews in a bibliography. Author-date puts (Interviewee Year) in the sentence and a matching reference-list entry for published interviews. Unpublished interviews stay in the note or parenthesis in both systems.
- How do you cite an anonymous interview in Chicago?
- Use a description such as "Interview with a hospital social worker, New York, January 10, 2025," and explain the confidentiality agreement in the text. CMOS 14.109 covers unattributed interviews. Do not add details that would identify the speaker, and do not force a bibliography entry.
- Is Chicago 17th or 18th edition current for interview citations in 2026?
- The 18th edition (2024) is current. Use CMOS 14.108–14.111. You may still see 17th-edition numbers 14.211–14.214 on older library guides. The interviewee-first rule and the unpublished-in-notes rule did not change; book citations inside interview collections no longer need a city of publication.
- How is citing an interview different in APA versus Chicago?
- APA 7 lists a published interview under the interviewer or the show host in many cases and cites a personal interview as an in-text personal communication only. Chicago lists the interviewee first and uses notes for unpublished interviews. If your syllabus says APA, do not use these Chicago examples. See the APA interview guide.