Looks of interest, amusement or skepticism are three responses I often get when I tell people I am a professional storyteller. Since my work does not seem to fall into a familiar job category, I am usually asked to explain what I do as a storyteller, what sort of stories I tell, who hires me and if it is actually possible to make a living telling stories.

Although I have been somewhat involved with performance of one kind or another for most of my life, I didn’t think of storytelling as a possible profession until 1996 after I had been downsized from a position in marketing for a non-profit organization. It was then when I took personal inventory, revisited old skills and discovered the joy that only comes from doing what I love to do. Whether I tell to audiences of children, tweens, teens, adults or seniors, if I do my job right I am able to make a connection through the art of story that might otherwise be impossible.

Every storyteller brings something unique to their work, making it possible to enrich the experience in a special way. Some people sing beautifully or play a musical instrument; others are poets, visual artists or dancers. Years ago I used puppetry and magic when I learned how to be a clown, so it is easy for me to call on these skills when I tell stories.

When I work in schools, I make certain my workshops and classroom exercises address specific educational learning standards and complement state common core standards. It is essential for storytellers working in schools to be well informed about what is expected, and be ready to provide connections in performances and workshops to as many educational goals as possible.

The popular thirty-second elevator speech that job seekers are told to perfect seldom covers all the questions I get about my work. This might be because many people inaccurately equate storytelling with pre-school story time where a book is read to a group of tiny tots. The fact is that storytelling is an age-old person-to-person form of communication allowing a storyteller to share stories with people of all ages and from every walk of life.  Stories are told by different storytellers in almost every setting imaginable, and some storytellers specialize in order to meet the story interests of a specific niche: business/corporate, healing/therapeutic, educational, religious, cultural, historic, nature, environment/ecology. This is why it is so difficult to make one single statement to answer the question, “what does a storyteller do?”

You can contact Glenda at Glenda@storyartsgroup.com.

How do you use stories in your work?

Stories are the narrative of human existence. When we read a book, watch a movie, attend the theatre, talk to our friends – we are immersing ourselves in a story. Stories are how we share the experience of living.

I use stories to access emotions. When you connect with the emotions of an experience, you open the subconscious. And as soon as you open the subconscious, you can remove emotional blocks, let go of unnecessary baggage, tap into the authentic YOU and effectively use the Inner Wisdom that resides in all of us.

Do you use folk tales, fairy tales, or true stories or any combination and why?

I use all of them and in any combination that works. Our own true stories help us understand our experience. When we can understand the experience with our rational minds, we can then reinforce the positive emotional effect, let go of the negative emotions and then move forward with awareness.

Fairy tales and folk tales contain the wisdom of the ages. The act of listening puts us in a different place. And in this different place, we can more easily identify with the characters’ plight. We can understand the resolution of their conflicts and we can also put ourselves in their shoes. This experience offers insight into our own dilemmas.

What are some of the ways stories can be used to heal?

Stories can show the way to create safety, value your gifts, resolve conflicts, understand hidden agendas, and leave all the baggage that weighs you down by the roadside.

Sometimes what we say we want and what we really want are two different things. Tiger loses the coconut soup he has worked so hard to make in “Anansi & de Coconut Soup” because he lacks this awareness.  Discussing the story and playing with different decisions the characters could have made offers a new perspective, which then brings realization about your own situations.

I use stories to illuminate pathways for my clients to move forward in their lives.

You can see more at Carolyn’s website, www.listenwithcarolyn.com.

For the last six and a half years, each month six people have been getting on stage at Odyssey Storytelling and telling ten-minute stories from their lives. I started the event at the (sadly) defunct Wilde Playhouse and moved to the Hotel Congress about five years ago.  Now almost every first Thursday of the month, you can see your friends and neighbors (and people you’d like to meet), on stage in the Club Congress. You can check out the hundreds of storytellers that have told at our website.

Adam Hostetter joined as assistant producer and co-host a few years ago. A couple of times a year we have a guest curator who’s job it is to invite the storytellers and be the host that month.  You can see volunteer and sometimes guest curator Sarah K. Smith tell a story at the “Exposed: Naked in Public” show here.

Odyssey’s tag line is To Create Community, One Story at a Time, and each month we invite audience members to announce community events, pass out flyers and make their creative ventures known.  Networking, entertaining and (sometimes) enlightening is the goal.

Email penelope@odysseystorytelling.com if you have a story to tell:

Odyssey Storytelling 2010-2011 Themes

September 2, Crazy for You: An Evening about Insanity

October 7, Bad Behavior: The Crime Show

November 4, Masks: the Hidden Identity Show

December 2, Belly Laughs: Humor for the Holiday

January 6: The Devil Made Me Do It

February 3: The Hidden Gem Show: Tucson Tales

March 3: Chutzpah! The Audacity Show

April 7: Shoulda Been Dead: Stories From the Edge

May 5: Its All Relative: Family Stories

June 2: Summer Camp

July 7: Two Sides to Every Story: Tandem Telling

August 4: Guess What? Stories of the Unexpected

September 1: The Things We Do For Love

November 3: Falling: Stories of Plunging In

December 1: Superpowers: The Extraordinary Show

Odyssey Storytelling in a program of StoryArts Group, Inc, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit arts organization.

Most of the storytellers you saw on the  storytelling stage at the Festival of Books were members of the storytelling network,

The Tucson group usually meets on the first Saturday of every month at the Himmel Library, 240 South Treat, at 9:15 for some socializing and 9:30 for the program.  April is an exception because they’ll be telling stories at the Mini Time Machine – Tucson Museum of Miniatures for their program.  You do not have to be a member to attend their meetings.

Tellers of Tales members regularly tell stories at libraries, schools, hospitals, nursing homes, churches  and other places where storytelling is welcomed. Members also organize and participate in many local and community events.

Their website is a resource for other Arizona and national storytelling events and activities including the South Mountain Community College Storytelling Institute in Phoenix.

That’s how you’ll be greeted when you go to Jordan’s website. Not only is he a storyteller with specialties in astronomy and Jewish stories, he’s also an educator in Jewish studies & math, plays a number of instruments in jazz, rock & klezmer bands and can do it all in 3 languages!

His versatility is showcased in the range of offerings he has listed on his website: party storytelling, storytelling workshops, custom story creation, living history, group drama activities and group musical improv (jam sessions / drum circles).  He even has a weekly Jewish storytelling segment on “Too Jewish Radio”, on KVOI AM 690.

Tucson is now the home of this world traveler. Sheila Wilensky chronicled some of his history in her April 3, 2009 article in the Arizona Jewish Post. You might have caught him telling on the storytelling stage of the Festival of Books and you’ve got some other opportunities to see him in action coming up.  He’ll be performing at the following venues:

March 27, 1 p.m. –  Water Tales at The Water Project

April 10, 2 p.m.,  Green Tales for a Blue Planet: Old Stories to Guide our New Way with the World Biosphere2

April 11, 1 p.m., Wandering Animal Tales throughout the zoo, Reid Park Zoo

April 17, 11 a.m., Animal Stories for Earth Day: Reid Park Zoo

Be sure to stop and say hi from another story lover.

Author, storyteller, poet, teacher, and Poet Laureate of Kansas,

Caryn is the founder of Transformative Language Arts at Goddard College. According to their website,

Transformative language arts is a new and emerging academic field focused on social and personal transformation through the power of the written, spoken, or sung word. Drawing on all of the language arts, transformative language artists bring the language arts to community-building, cultural and ecological restoration, personal development, and many other areas of individual and collective liberation.

Transformative Language Arts  include storytelling, writing, theater, spoken word  – anything with words out loud and on the page.   Caryn is also a member of the Healing Story Alliance, a special interest group of the at National Storytelling Network, the purpose of which is to “explore and promote the use of storytelling in healing”

Caryn sees storytelling as one way to bring communities together.  She told me about an experience she had organizing a political  group of very diverse people.  The way the group found what action it made sense to take was when all 60 people told each other their stories.  It was a way to understand the motives and history of each other, dispelling prejudice and making the group more cohesive.

On her website there is a reference to Tikkun Olam, a tradition in Judaism stating that the world is broken and it’s our job to help repair it. According to My Jewish Learning it has “come to connote social action and the pursuit of social justice”.  According to Caryn, the way people make lasting transformations in their lives and heal the world is through story.  If people can learn from the stories they are living they can use storytelling and writing to change their lives for the better.

You can catch Caryn at the following venues for the next 3 days:

Friday, January 15 at 7 p.m., readings from The Sky Begins at Your Feet and Landed at Silver Bells Trader at 7119 N Oracle Rd, 520/797-6852.

Saturday, January 16 at 6 p.m., following Havdallah Service, “Finding the Sky That Begins At Our Feet As We Change and Age,” reading and ceremonial writing at Temple Emanu-El, 225 N. Country Club Rd., 520/327-4501.

Sunday, January 17 at 10 a.m., “Landed: Poetry, Wonder and the Power of the Word to Land Us in Our Own Hearts,” at Temple Emanu-El, 225 N. Country Club Rd., 520/327-4501.

Sunday, January 17 at 2 p.m., Harvest Y Courtyard (5th Ave. and University) “Coming Home to Earth, Sky, Body and Community: A Reading with Kansas Poet Laureate Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg and Special Guest Jefferson Carter” sponsored by Sky Island Alliance.

There wasn’t much going on at this time of year.  We peeked into the auditorium and checked out the gift shop where I bought some red clown noses for some children I know.

Their big event is the National Storytelling Festival in October when five circus tents are erected near the center in this quaint little town and storytellers and listeners from around the world gather. Their goal, through the power of storytelling, is to “build a better world—healthier communities, more effective workplaces and schools of learning, and enriched human life.”

It seems everybody around here in these small towns knows a storyteller.  We had lunch with a woman from Spruce Pine whose cousin from Boone is a professional storyteller. My host met Kathryn Tucker Windham while on a field trip with kids from a boarding school where he was working.  According to Wikipedia, Ms Windham (born June 2, 1918) is an American storyteller, author, photographer, and journalist. She was born in Selma, Alabama and was raised in nearby Thomasville.  Her specialty is stories about ghosts and growing up and living in the South.  You can hear her on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered.

Actually, it seems like everyone in the South is a storyteller.

Silver Linings: The Gratitude Show, stories about things working much better than expected, was the theme at a recent Odyssey Storytelling event.  Seven tellers got up on stage and shared important personal life-changing stories to a very appreciative audience.  Not only did the tellers feel empowered by the experience but the audience was inspired and moved by the stories of loss and triumph.  People were able to identify with the theme, if not the exact circumstances of a story, and offer the teller empathy and understanding.

Diverse themes are chosen for the precise purpose of covering a great range of the human experience.  Sometimes the stories are humorous and sometimes they bring tears to the eye, both are valid ways of expressing a feeling. But the most important element is that people tell their truth as they see it. There’s a real human need to be heard and to be seen exactly as we are with no pretense.  If the audience is a room full of strangers or just one other person, the power of storytelling can transform people’s lives.

I always tell people that public storytelling is not therapy, but it’s therapeutic.

If you want to tell your story on stage, contact me.

Arline Klatte & Beth Lisick

Seven years ago Beth Lisick and Arline Klatte invited six people from different backgrounds to tell ten-minute true stories at a San Francisco club.  Porchlight Storytelling was successful from the start, attracting a diverse Bay Area audience and storytellers from hipsters to dotcom execs.  I went to a show about 6 years ago and loved it so much that I imported the model to Tucson.

Writer/performer Beth (disclaimer, she’s my daughter-in-law) told me about the beginnings of Porchlight.  She was invited to tell a story at The Moth, the New York City storytelling event that came to San Francisco for a show, and a club owner suggested that she start a storytelling event in San Francisco.  Since she was involved in the poetry slam community where it was common to start new events, she decided to just do it.

Beth and Arline are easygoing hosts at this popular monthly event that attracts hundreds of people.  They’re a good team because they have different connections so they can feature a diverse group of storytellers.

Although it’s difficult to get everyone together for a rehearsal, Beth says it makes a better and more cohesive show when all the storytellers can hear each other’s story and get and give feedback.

Mostly the stories are well received but they did have an unpleasant surprise once when a volunteer from the audience told an unrehearsed story that turned out to be racist.  When Arline and Beth returned to the stage they weren’t sure how to handle it so they announced that they don’t agree with the views and opinion of all the storytellers.

After six years of running the event on their own, Porchlight was picked up for sponsorship by Friends of the San Francisco Library.  Beth and Arline are branching out into teaching and will be presenting a four-week workshops at Intersection for the Arts in San Francisco.

Beth, besides being a published author, is half of the comedy duo Groomed for Success with Tara Jepsen, and she’s working on another book.

The circumstances were less than ideal.  The outdoor courtyard where Glenda Bonin was to tell her story at the grand opening of the UA Poetry Center had no mic nor stage.  She gamely climbed on top of a large rock in her long skirt and silver concho belt and mesmerized her audience with a tale of early settlers in the west.

Glenda was introduced to storytelling many years ago when her children where young and she volunteered to tell stories at her local library.  She had learned magic and was working part-time as a clown but didn’t consider it a serious career so she took a “real job”.  After she was downsized and was helping her ill father she had the opportunity to review her life and asked herself the question, “when was I the most happy in my life?”  The answer turned out to be when she was telling stories.

She immersed herself in learning the craft by attending workshops and festivals and read everything she could get her hands on.  She began by offering her services for free in order to get experience and to build a customer base and after two years she felt confident that she was ready to turn pro.  She still will do an occasional benefit for a worthy cause but now she’s able to support herself with her art.

Glenda specializes in stories for kids and families although she loves working with special populations such as college classes, special needs folks and seniors.  In addition to plying her trade in Tucson and Phoenix her work takes her all over the country.  She travels  to rural areas in an RV, sometimes for month long residencies.  She also offers workshops and digital storytelling; visit her website, Story Works Group to learn more.

Some of the stories that Glenda tells are original and some are re-creations of traditional stories with her personal stamp on them.  She puts a lot of time into learning and rehearsing them both with a tape recorder and with her peer group of other storytellers. She’s working on a book collection of the stories that she tells.

Glenda is also deep into a research project that revolves around her grandmother, a fascinating woman named Vera Martin.  She is creating a Chautauqua, a performance where one takes on the persona of another person and tells the story from their point of view. Some of you might remember Hal Holbrook becoming Mark Twain on stage, that’s a Chautauqua.

When I asked her the hardest part of the life of a professional storyteller she answered, “not making enough to put money into savings,” a common dilemma of creative self-employed people who are practicing their art.