If you  love stories and you haven’t heard of Story Corps, you must be living under a rock. Their mobile recording studio in an airstream trailer was in Tucson at the Joel D. Valdez library a few years ago and I had the privilege of adding my story to their archives housed somewhere in the Smithsonian Museum. You can sign up for their weekly newsletter (newsletter@storycorps.org) that includes a video story or listen to some of the stories they have collected here.

You can also get podcasts from the mother of personal storytelling, The Moth, whose tagline is “true stories told live.”

At Short Story Radio you can hear original stories read by professional readers in a classy English accent. Ian Skillicorn began this website in 2006 in order to “promote the short story form and short story writers, and to broadcast quality recordings of short stories via the website and podcast.” They state that their stories are listened to “by tens of thousands of people a month, from all over the world.”

What about kids? Just like storytime at the library, your child can hear a free story at Storynory. You can listen to it on the website or download it to hear later. They offer original stories, fairy tales and classics which includes Rudyard Kipling and Oscar Wilde.

If you’re not sure how to be a good listener, it’s all spelled our for you at Story Arts where they say “enthusiastic listeners create great storytellers” and have designed a listening skills rubric

Observable Traits of an Enthusiastic Listener: An alert, enthusiastic listener apparently focuses attention on the speaker, and responds appropriately to dramatic or comedic moments in the communication with silence, laughter, and body language. This type of active listening encourages the communicator.

The website lays out a chart to evaluate someone’s listening skills ranked from beginner to accomplished.

If a storyteller told a story in a forest and there was no one there to hear it, is it a story?

Bawdy Storytelling is not for the prudish or delicate.  It is really what it advertises, stories about sex from every conceivable angle (pun intended). A banner on the home page of the website boasts that the LA Weekly calls it “The Moth for Pervs.”

Bawdy Storytelling is a monthly storytelling event in San Francisco that features “real people sharing their bona fide sexual exploits in 10 minutes or less . . . Storytellers are an eclectic mix of authors, pornstars, comedians, sex educators and actors.”  The themes include “Libertine,” “Queer,” “Tales of Non-Monogamy,” “Think Kink,” and “Taboo.”

photo from Facebook

Founder, producer and curator Dixie De La Tour recently celebrated her 4th anniversary of entertaining and shocking people at the Bay Area’s “premier salon de smut.”  You can Google her and find out what else she’s up to.

The website has a Watch Us tab where you can experience some performances and a Vimeo video gallery. BE AWARE, THIS MATERIAL IS EXPLICIT.

Jordan Hill just put out a call for all storytellers, tall tale turners, jokesters and accomplished liars!

Are you considered “the storyteller” in your family or community? Do you know and tell traditional tales or jokes from your culture?  Do you have stories from your life in Tucson that you love to tell and your friends love to hear? Then we want you!

Tucson Meet Yourself is expanding the presence of storytelling at the festival, and there are a variety of ways for traditional and/or Tucson focused storytellers to be involved.  Applications are now OPEN:  http://www.tucsonmeetyourself.org/2011-tmy-performer-application/

Calling all Puppeteers too!

TMY will be giving puppetry the place it deserves amongst the other traditional and contemporary folk arts being showcased at this year’s festival.  If you or someone you know is a puppeteer, applications are now OPEN: http://www.tucsonmeetyourself.org/2011-tmy-performer-application/

Questions? Contact Jordan Hill at 520-468-9693 or jordanhillstoryteller@gmail.com