National Storytelling Network

by Loren Niemi. “It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.” Herman Melville Telling your own story helps illuminate the universal in the specific. It lets you own your experience, emotions, pain and hope. Telling the story of the “Other” is an act of compassion that lets you recognize their humanity […]

Maureen Evans. The parable of the Prodigal Son, from the Gospel of Luke 15:11-32, resonates with me as an apt and adaptable story about the complexity of forgiveness. The word “prodigal” means wasteful, especially with money. Rembrandt’s painting “The Return of the Prodigal Son,” hanging in The Hermitage, has a strong place in my heart.

by Aanand Chabukswar. Background The World Centre for Creative Learning Foundation (WCCLF), a group of teachers-artists within India, introduces art forms for healing and growth into various settings. Before the project “CHI” —energy!— (Creative Healing Interventions) began in 2001, no known programs of creative therapies existed in 365 drug and alcohol abuse prevention and rehabilitation

by Michael Cotter. A few years back, I was fortunate to join in as the storyteller for an experiential workshop involving a film crew, health professionals, musicians and twenty-two terminally ill people of various ages. This collaboration resulted in a powerful film, “The Healing Power of Stories, ” that documents one of the most memorable

by Vanita Moore. About ten years ago when I wrote this story, I never dreamed I’d find myself back in Indiana, working beside my husband in his family’s funeral home or using a story to help a grieving widow. But one day, as we sat in her farmhouse living room and talked about how hard

By Peggy Helmick-Richardson. For it was a saying among them that a man is not really dead until he is forgotten. —“Cow-Tail Switch” from A Treasury of African Folklore, Harold Courlander. Born in 1924, Hilda Stern Cohen was raised in the tiny German village of Nieder Ohmen. When Hitler came to power, Hilda and her

by Lewis Mehl-Medrona. The power of story emerged in the pages of the New York Times on May 12, 2002, in an article by Natalie Angier about Michael Gearin-Tosh, a professor of English literature at Oxford University. We read the spirited account of his diagnosis of multiple myeloma, a virulent cancer of the bone marrow.

by Suzi Wolf. look for me in the shadows for there is where I will be telling the stories of the ancient ones whispering tales to the people look for me in the shadows my face illuminated by the clan’s fire or a storytelling candle my shape moving among the people look for me in

by Diane Wyzga. They said I was mentally disturbed. They said I posed a threat. They asked the security guards to call the police and have me removed from the premises. Once, when the Spanish had taken over an Aztec city they refused to let in anyone who was dressed in traditional Aztec clothes. A