Articles

By Glenda Bonin In the past two years, my storytelling repertoire has expanded to include audiences of elders – some in vigorous health, and others dealing with a variety of medical conditions and memory loss. For the most part, these audiences are associated with senior living communities or private assisted living sites. I have identified […]

By Cindy Rivka Marshall How do communities or organizations encourage understanding and respect of human differences? Those of us who deeply understand the potential of both story sharing and story listening have a lot to offer. I use personal storytelling as a tool for diversity work. I have strong faith in the power of story

By Mike Speller In the afterglow of the wonderful buffet published in Storytelling Magazine’s “Coming Home Laughter” edition, I am proud to say NSN chose the Professor to share his Humor Kourse at the upcoming summer conference/workshop.   So now I have plenty of material to copy, paraphrase, and claim as my own. I am joshing,

by Carolyn Stearns In the back of the closet, an old box in the attic, a jewelry box long forgotten, these are the places some of your family stories lurk. I have focused a portion of my work on unearthing these remnants of stories and fleshing them out. There are jewels of stories waiting to

by Lillian Rodrigues-Pang Twenty years ago I sat in the concrete surrounds of the mental health ward next to my brother with nothing to say. I couldn’t talk to him about the beautiful sunny day outside, about awesome surf conditions, or my nephew’s first soccer game that was coming up. All of these were unobtainable

by Doug Lipman If you’ve hung around storytelling (or acting or writing) long enough, you’ve probably heard the familiar instruction: “Show, don’t tell.” This maxim points toward a helpful idea: in order to make a scene or sentence maximally vivid for your listeners, you need to “show” what happened, rather than “tell” ABOUT what happened.

by Kate Dudding Some people say there is a lot of evil in the world these days. Mr. Rogers said, “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’” I witnessed one

Katie Knutson The Minnesota State Arts Board and regional arts councils review their grant applications publicly. Anyone may sit and listen to the grants being reviewed, but may not speak. Every time I submit a grant application, I try to listen to it being reviewed (if possible). I have learned so much about the process