by Flora Joy, Every professional storyteller once asked this same question. Even if you are considering becoming a “just-for-fun” storyteller, you are likely filled with some anxieties, apprehensions, and lots of questions about the process. “How do I begin?” “Will folks laugh at me?” “How do I book my first gig?” “When do I […]
How to Become a Storyteller Details »
Image by sentavio on Freepik A statement by the National Storytelling Network defines Storytelling as an ancient art form and a valuable form of human expression. Because story is essential to so many art forms, however, the word “storytelling” is often used in many ways. As a result, the National Storytelling Network would like to
What Is Storytelling? Details »
By Lyn Ford In his 2001 Viking Penguin publication, Laughter: A Scientific Investigation, Robert R. Provine stated, “… ‘ha ha’, ‘ho ho’ or ‘he he’. These ‘words’ are part of the human universal vocabulary, produced and recognized by people of all cultures… There are thousands of languages, hundreds of thousands of dialects, but everyone speaks laughter
Everyone Speaks Laughter Details »
By Penelope Starr Once a week I meet up with four friends and we walk a mile along a dry-river path to a coffee shop where we sip beverages, eat bagels and gab. Our ages range from late fifties to early eighties—we have more than three hundred years of combined life stories to share. Last
Creating Connections, One Story at a Time Details »
By Julienne B. Ryan Have you had this experience? You’re at a business event and you’ve met a fellow attendee and have spent the last five minutes sharing the basics like your names, job titles and event-related comments. You think you’re doing a reasonable job of being appropriately engaging and inquisitive. You haven’t made any
One More Question-The Importance of Listening to your Gut when you Network Details »
By Anne Shimojima Of all the storytelling projects I’ve been involved with in the last thirty-plus years, none has been more meaningful, more revealing, or more personally satisfying than the story of my own family’s journey from Japan to the United States and their incarceration during World War II. But it was a surprising turn
Tell Your Family’s Story Details »
Living in Paradise: A reflection from a story workshop with refugees in Australia. by Donna Jacobs Sife © When working with personal stories, it is the moment that I search for. Not a chronology of life experience which so easily becomes ‘and then…and then.. and then’ which doesn’t grip the heart, or even truly tell
by Sara Beth Nelson My husband John and I cross the threshold from the still sunny summer evening into the dark music hall. There is a man at a podium. I show him the electronic tickets on my glowing phone screen. He stamps our hands with thick blue ink. I go to the table on
A Night At The Monti Details »
by Karen Chace ©2017 “Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning. But for children play is serious learning. Play is really the work of childhood.” – Fred Rogers From the moment my students stepped into the room for the after school storytelling program, ‘after school’ being the operative words, I was
DIVING IN THE MOON HONORING STORY, FACILITATING HEALING Another Man’s Shoes © Naomi Baltuck Most kids are teens before their parents sit them down, usually just before the first date, for that awkward talk about the unfortunate consequences of the careless exchange of body fluids. I had that talk with my kids before the first
