The Story Forge
Vol. 4, No. 1 | January 2020
Welcome to the updated NSN e-newsletter - The Story Forge! This newsletter is intended for those storytellers and story-lovers who originally forged the storytelling community and those who continue to forge the community. We hope you enjoy the adjustments that have been made. NSN wants this newsletter to be for the storytelling community, BY the storytelling community! Please let us know if you have items that would be of interest to our readers.
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Hi ! Welcome to a new year and a new decade! January brings with it the mindset of a new start. The NSN staff is looking forward to the new year and the opportunity to work with a number of new Board Members. We are sad to see our seasoned Board Members leave but, as Greek philosopher Heraclitus is quoted as saying, "change is the only constant in life." We wish our "retiring" Board Members well and hope the future brings them many wonderful opportunities. Mother Nature seems to be playing with her weather yo-yo in Kansas City and has taken us from the teens to almost 70 degrees during December! Whatever Mother Nature is handing out in your locality, we're handing out this month's Story Forge for your perusal. Happy reading!
Did you miss an edition of The Story Forge? You can read previous editions of the newsletter here.
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At the National Storytelling Network, our mission is to advance all forms of storytelling within the community through promotion, advocacy, and education.
STORY NOW! Interview Series
The theme of our 2019 annual conference was Story Now!
Now! From the boardroom to the classroom, and the page to the stage, personal stories and folktales are catalysts for change in every aspect of our lives.
Now! We are witnessing the power of stories to tear down the walls that divide us, build bridges between people and cultures, and connect us, human-to-human.
In this interview series, we’ll talk to storytellers who exemplify this Story Now! movement.
Each month we’ll sit down with an NSN member or member organization, from around the globe, and go behind the scenes to explore how they are personally harnessing the power of storytelling to tear down walls, to be a catalyst for change and connect us human-to-human. Through one-on-one, in-depth conversations, we’ll discover the type of storytelling they do, how they do it, who their audience is and, most importantly, they’ll give examples of the real world, tangible results they get.
Karen Dietz, Ph.D.
San Diego, California
Kathy: You say storytelling in business is a social justice initiation that can dissolve barriers and move the organization forward. Explain.
Karen: Organizations have many of the same characteristics of communities, groups, societies, cultures, etc. In other words, within a company (especially larger ones), there are people whose voices/stories are not heard. They are often ignored or put down. We see this in any organization that has silos and...
Read more of Karen's interview on the NSN website by clicking the button below!
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South Korea trains grandmothers to become professional storytellers
SEOUL, South Korea — Park Jeonghee, 64, donned a traditional Korean dress embroidered with tiny flowers and sat down in front of a class of preschoolers. Children gathered around her, their eyes twinkling with curiosity and anticipation. Once Park grabbed the audience’s attention with her shiny antique dress, she began to tell a folktale — on this particular day the title was “Price of smell, price of sound.”
She is a professionally trained “storytelling granny"...
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PARTNER PROGRAM NEWS
The Story Center at Mid-Continent Public Library
The Story Center, established in 2013, celebrates and develops writers, performers, and filmmakers through access to free resources, workshops, and a community of storytellers. The Story Center offers a Storytelling Certificate Program in partnership with Metropolitan Community College, The Story Center Speaker Series in partnership with Rainy Day Books, a local author fair every November, and the award-winning Woodneath Press, which allows authors to see their work in print. This partnership supports NSN's mission to advance all forms of storytelling within the community by engaging the community through the use of storytelling and developing synergies that will encourage the growth of storytelling in the community.
Presenter Needed
The Story Center in Kansas City, Missouri is developing a Story Camp for teens that will run from July 13-17, 2020, in conjunction with the Summer Learning Program theme: Imagine Your Story: Fairy Tales, Mythology, and Fantasy.
Our ideal class size will be fifteen 12-15-year-olds per track. Funding from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation allows us to offer this program free-of-charge to participants as well as to provide stipends for presenters.
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MEMBER NEWS
Book Review - Four Days With Kenny Tedford
Paul Smith, a member of the National Storytelling Network, is one of the world’s leading experts on organizational storytelling. His work has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Inc. Magazine, Time, Forbes, Fast Company, The Washington Post, PR News, and Success Magazine.
This is a story of two men destined to meet. Kenny Tedford had a story the world needed to hear and learn from, and Paul was the person who was seemingly chosen, maybe by fate, to tell his story.
Paul and Kenny met purely by chance in July of 2012 at the National Storytelling Conference, held in Covington, KY that year.
From the moment Kenny sat down next to Paul, (by chance), and before they even spoke a word to each other, Paul was intrigued by what he observed. As Paul would learn later that day when he had lunch with Kenny, Kenny Tedford had earned a Master’s Degree in Storytelling -- amazing because Kenny was born with brain damage and many disabilities including blindness and deafness. And this was just the tip of the iceberg.
That next year Paul interviewed Kenny for four days and wrote his unbelievable life story.
This book is for anyone who appreciates the power of storytelling. But more important, it’s for those who question the power a single story has to permanently transform both the teller and listener in profound ways.
For me, this quote from Paul summed up the overriding message of the book.
As Paul explains, “If I was going to properly grasp the wisdom from this man’s life, I’d need to think of him not as someone with disabilities and limitations, like I was a psychologist studying a patient, but as someone with a unique perspective and life experiences I didn’t possess and that I wanted to learn from. I needed to think of Kenny not as my subject. But as my teacher.”
Kathy Greenamyre, Community Relations Manager
National Storytelling Network
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NEWS FROM NSN'S SPECIAL INTEREST GROUPS
Youth, Educators and Storytellers (YES)
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The YES SIG will have its January Zoom call on January 23 at 7:00pm EST
Pleasant De Spain shares Vagabonds of Imagination
‘Vagabond,’ derived from the Latin word vagary, means to wander.
Storytellers are the vagabonds of imagination. We begin with a mission to seek and find, putting our tales, old and new, made-up and true, into a beginning- middle-end, and sharing them with our listeners, near and far.
Where have we dared to wander? Let’s gather to discuss the success and failures of our missions, searches and finds. Let’s share core beliefs supporting our quests, not only for stories to tell but for light and life.
Free to YES members, $15 for non-members
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UPCOMING EVENTS
Calendar events can be viewed on the NSN website by clicking the button below.
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NORTH CENTRAL REGION
Illinois
Sorry, there are no upcoming events on our calendar for the next 31 days in this area. Do you know of an upcoming event? Submit it to be included on the NSN calendar here!
Indiana
January 11, 2020, 7:00 pm, Growing up Black and White in America
January 13, 2020, 1:00 pm, As I Recall Storytelling Guild: Hancock County Public Library
January 15, 2020, 2:00 pm, As I Recall Storytelling Guild: College Branch Library
February 8, 2020, 7:00 pm, Where There's Smoke, There's Dinner: Stories of a Seared Childhood
Michigan
January 2, 2020, 7:00 pm, Monthly Moth Story Slam
January 7, 2020, 6:30 pm, Monthly Moth Story Slam
January 8, 2020, 7:00 pm, Muskegon Yarnspinners Monthly Meeting
January 9, 2020, 9:30 am, Parent-Tellers
January 9, 2020, 6:30 pm, Mid-Michigan Area Storytellers (M.A.S.T.) meeting
January 16, 2020, 9:30 am, Parent-Tellers
January 16, 2020, 7:30 pm, Go Comedy Improv Theater
January 17, 2020, 7:00 pm, Secret Society Of Twisted Storytellers
January 18, 2020, 12:00 pm, Detroit Story League Monthly Meeting
January 19, 2020, 2:00 pm, Storytelling workshop with Genot “Winter Elk” Picor
January 20, 2020, 6:30 pm, StorySpinners of Grand Rapids Monthly Meeting
January 20, 2020, 7:00 pm, Here:Say Storytelling "Exquisite Corpus."
January 20, 2020, 7:00 pm, Lansing Storytellers Guild Monthly Meeting
January 21, 2020, 6:30 pm, Monthly Moth Story Slam
January 23, 2020, 9:30 am, Parent-Tellers
January 25, 2020, 10:00 am, Detroit Association of Black Storytellers Monthly Meeting
January 26, 2020, 2:00 pm, Ann Arbor Storytellers’ Guild Monthly meetings
January 30, 2020, 9:30 am, Parent-Tellers
February 4, 2020, 6:30 pm, Monthly Moth Story Slam
Minnesota
Sorry, there are no upcoming events on our calendar for the next 31 days in this area. Do you know of an upcoming event? Submit it to be included on the NSN calendar here!
Nebraska
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North Dakota
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Ohio
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South Dakota
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Wisconsin
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Do you know of an upcoming event in this region? Submit it to be included on the NSN event calendar! Click here to submit an event.
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SOUTHEAST REGION
Alabama
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Georgia
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Kentucky
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Mississippi
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Tennessee
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Do you know of an upcoming event in this region? Submit it to be included on the NSN event calendar! Click here to submit an event.
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NORTHEAST REGION
Massachusetts
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New Hampshire
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New York
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Rhode Island
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Vermont
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Do you know of an upcoming event in this region? Submit it to be included on the NSN event calendar! Click here to submit an event.
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MID-ATLANTIC REGION
Delaware
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District of Columbia
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New Jersey
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New York
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West Virginia
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Do you know of an upcoming event in this region? Submit it to be included on the NSN event calendar! Click here to submit an event.
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SOUTH CENTRAL REGION
Arkansas
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Louisiana
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Missouri
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Oklahoma
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Do you know of an upcoming event in this region? Submit it to be included on the NSN event calendar! Click here to submit an event.
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WESTERN REGION
Arizona
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Colorado
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Idaho
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Montana
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New Mexico
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Utah
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Wy0ming
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Do you know of an upcoming event in this region? Submit it to be included on the NSN event calendar! Click here to submit an event.
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PACIFIC REGION
Alaska
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Hawaii
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Washington
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Do you know of an upcoming event in this region? Submit it to be included on the NSN event calendar! Click here to submit an event.
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INTERNATIONAL & ONLINE
International
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Do you know of an upcoming event in this region? Submit it to be included on the NSN event calendar! Click here to submit an event.
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Kansas City, MO 64157
United States
1-800-525-4514
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