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Press Play to hear Diane Wolkstein and Connecting with Audiences, Other Cultures and Ourselves on the Art of Storytelling with Brother Wolf. Bio… Diane Wolkstein is one of the world’s most preminent storytellers and the award-winning author of more than 30 books, CDs, and DVDs. From amusing children’s tales to epic adventures for adults, Wolkstein has performed [...]

Press Play to hear Octavia Sexton talk about Jack Story and how his Traditional Tale belongs to everyone. on the Art of Storytelling with Brother Wolf.

Octavia Sexton writes…
I think most people probably know that a Jack Tale is a trickster story and Jack. They’ve been around for over 800 years – originating in the British Isles. The stories came to North America via European settlers. The stories told in the Appalachian Mountains began to change through the years to reflect the environment and cultural traditions that emerged among the mountain people.

I grew up in a storytelling tradition and stories were a part of life. I heard a variety of stories not only through kinfolk but also at school. I went to a one-room school and the only thing to do at recess was sing songs, tell stories and play games that did not require ‘stuff.’ We didn’t have any ‘stuff’ to play with because we were all just a bunch of poor country kids. I think I established myself very early as a storyteller. I remember being 5 years old and standing on a big rock in the yard of one of my uncles’ houses and telling tales to my cousins, aunts and uncles who gathered on the big front porch. We had all kinds of stories, but I never knew what a Jack Tale was until I went to college.

After eighth grade, Mommy asked me if I wanted to get married or go on to high school. I went on to high school! Five months after graduating high school, I was married, pregnant and working for minimum wage in a factory. We lived in a two-room house, got water from a spring and used an outhouse. Poverty is like a great black hole that keeps sucking you in deeper – almost impossible to get out. Hoping to break the grip of poverty for my family, I went to college full time. While in college the professors discovered I was a storyteller. I was asked if I knew any Jack Tales and I said no. Then I found out what they were and I realized I had heard Jack Tales all my life but the character wasn’t always called Jack. He could be named after anybody or just be called ‘a feller.’ Anyway, it was college that put me on the track to becoming a professional storyteller. I took a storytelling class in college and right off knew I couldn’t tell one like the professor said we should. I kept my mouth shut through that class and that is hard for me to do. Then on the last day, each student had to stand up and tell a story. I thought to myself, “Oh Lord, now everybody will know I can’t tell stories the right way.” I got up there and just told one like Grandpa because I couldn’t do it any different. When I finished everybody was real quiet and staring at me. Then the professor said I was the best storyteller he had ever heard. Talk about getting the ‘big head’ – you couldn’t shut my mouth after that. I started telling in other classes, at faculty meetings and just everywhere.

I think Jack Tales are great stories for anyone to tell and create because he is just like you and me wherever we are. You don’t have to be in Appalachia to tell a Jack Tale any more than we had to stay in Englan

Press Play to hear Laird Schaub speak about The Application of Story to Group Facilitation and Community Living on the Art of Storytelling with Brother Wolf

Laird Schaub Writes...
"As a consultant, I'm often asked to work with groups that consider themselves stuck. In helping them understand how they got there and the choices they have to move through it, I always start with the stories-the way in which each person makes sense of their reality as a member of the group. Invariably, the stories don't all match. Sometimes the realities are mutually exclusive. Still, I believe them all and do my best to help everyone in the group understand how each person's actions make sense from that person's perspective. Once I've established a bridge of understanding among the various players, it's then possible to build a new story, where each person's reality is now a little bigger and can hold aspects of other's realities as well.

The key to this is to not ask a person to change their core beliefs, change their personality, or change the way they work with information. I just ask them to change their story, and then to adjust their behaviors accordingly. I ask them to make shifts that are in their interest; ones that will help them be better understood and be less triggering for others. I ask them to make changes that will help them build relationship.

Often, people in the group will be in pain. Being stuck doesn't feel good, and if you cannot see past your own story it often appears that others have taken actions that are purposefully hurtful or disrespectful. Ouch! In this sense, pain is a symptom of a problem, and very useful in helping to diagnose where the stories are not in alignment. Because you want to be treating causes and not just symptoms, it's important here to resist the impulse to alleviate the pain as your priority. It's a better strategy to view the pain as an important source of information and explore it for the purpose of surfacing the clues you'll need to build a story where everyone can feel held and respected."

Brief Bio:
Laird has lived 36 years at Sandhill Farm, an income-sharing rural community in Missouri which he helped found. He homesteads there, has raised two kids, and has developed a flair for preserving food and celebration cooking. He is also the main administrator of the Fellowship for Intentional Community, a network organization he helped create in 1986, and that serves as a clearinghouse of information about North American communities of all stripes.

In addition to being an author and public speaker about various aspects of community, he's also a meeting junkie and has parlayed his passion for good process into a consulting business on group dynamics. He's worked with about 75 different groups around the US, many of them multiple times. His specialty is up-tempo meetings that engage the full range of human input, teaching groups to work creatively with conflict, and at the same time being ruthless about about capturing as mu

Press Play to hear Lloyd Arneach speak on a Cherokee perspective on Native American Storytelling on the Art of Storytelling with Brother Wolf.

This Post will be updated by Tuesday - if you want some more thoughts from the guest please come back then -

Biography

An enrolled member of the Eastern Band of Cherokee, Lloyd Arneach was born and reared on the Cherokee Reservation in Cherokee, North Carolina. He learned his first legends from two storytelling Uncles on the reservation.

From 1970 to 1990, Lloyd traveled throughout the state of Georgia, lecturing on Cherokee history and culture. This was done in his spare time while working for AT&T's computer department in Atlanta. In 1990, he added storytelling to his presentations on culture and history and in 1993 began a full-time career as both storyteller and historian.

Lloyd presents his stories in a style that is humorous, informative and extremely moving. Lloyd's stories range from the "old stories" of the Cherokee to contemporary stories he has collected; from creation stories to behind the scenes of "Dances with Wolves." He tells stories of different Native Americans: Floyd Red Crow Westerman; Billy Mills, an Olympic champion; a young Cree Indian girl with no stories to tell; and a postmaster on the Papago Reservation. He shares historical stories from a variety of Native American tribes. Some of these stories are difficult for Lloyd to tell because of the strong feelings associated with his experiences as a Native American.

Lloyd lectures on Cherokee history and culture in schools, universities, libraries, museums, historical societies, and civic groups. If requested, he can bring a number of Native American artifacts to show and demonstrate. Lloyd also conducts workshops on Native American storytelling, building appreciation of Native American culture and what the stories mean to the cultures from which they grew.

He has told stories at the Kennedy Center, National Folklife Festival (Washington, D.C.), the opening of the National Museum of the American Indian (Washington, D.C.), the Winnepeg International Storytelling Festival (Canada), festivals, schools, universities, Pow-Wows, theaters, and other venues throughout the United States. His CD Can You Hear the Smoke? features stories and legends adapted by Lloyd. In 1992, Children's Press published his book, The Animal's Ballgame, based on one of Lloyd's favorite Cherokee animal stories. During the summer of 2006, Lloyd performed in the Cherokee outdoor drama Unto These Hills - A Retelling. In the of summer (2008), Lloyd once again performed in the Cherokee outdoor drama Unto These Hills - A Retelling.

He has told stories on the Discovery Channel.

Lloyd has finished a new book of Cherokee stories,Long-Ago Stories of the Eastern Cherokee, that was released in early 2008.

Lloyd now lives in Cherokee, North Carolina.

Press Play to hear Baba Jamal Koram speak the responsibility of being a storytelling on the Art of Storytelling with Children.

Baba Jamal Koram is a storyteller in the African American Griotic TraditionsÔ he is a dedicated practitioner and teacher of the spoken word traditions and is a respected leader in the world of storytelling. Baba Jamal is a groundbreaking storyteller, educator, folk drummer and organizer. He is a past president of the National Association of Black Storytellers, Inc. and is a 2001 recipient of its prestigious Zora Neale Hurston award. Called a storyteller’s storyteller, and a Griot’s Griot he continues to travel across the nation sharing his stories and his presence with thousands of school children and their families. Baba Jamal holds the B.A., M.S. and Ed.S. degrees, and is married and the proud father of children, grand children, and godchildren.

This master storyteller uses his stories to inspire, encourage, and to uplift the positive growth of our children and in our communities.

He has said:

“My South Carolina great grandmother Mary would say to her grandchildren, “Bring me a cool glass of water, and I’ll tell you a story. Then she would proceed to tell them one of those traditional African American Gullah stories, about Bruh Rabbit or one of the many folkloric characters. . . I follow in her storytelling footsteps. . .Call me if you have a cool glass of spring water.”

For More information on Baba Jamal Koram check out his website: http://www.babajamalkoram.com/

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Currently survey participants responses are coming from…
(One participant may check more then one choice.)
Professional Storyteller 43%
Educator 43%
Parent 41%
Storytelling Organizer 34%
Story Admirer 34%
Audience Member 31%
Writer of Children’s Stories 23%
Semi-professional Storyteller 20%
Librarian 18%
Amateur Storyteller 16%
Storytelling Coach 16%
Faith Based Storyteller 15%

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Elizabeth Ellis will be interviewed by Eric Wolf on the relationship between Storytelling and the Development of Ethical Behavior on the Art of Storytelling with Children on Wednesday, Dec. 3 at 8pm EST.

Elizabeth Ellis Writes…
If I had a nickel for every time someone (attorney, state trooper, loan officer, IRS agent) has made fun of me because I told ‘em I am a storyteller, I could take us all out to dinner. At a nice place. With tablecloths. Because often the public perception of storytelling is that it is fluff and foolishness.
Well, we storytellers know better, and we have survived an entire movement of Back to the Basics and Almighty State Testing. What the left brain-ers don’t realize is there is another entire level of education far more basic to being human than the 3 R’s will ever be.
The most basic things about being human come from the right side of the brain, not the left. Chief among them is the ability to make ethical decisions. I am not talking about following the rules. Remember that the Nazis were great rule followers. Ethical decision-making requires the ability to imagine the effect of my behavior on your life. Without an active imagination, a child is an ethical cripple. The new study about the state of ethics of America’s youth just out from the Josephson Institute (http://josephsoninstitute.org/ for the full details of the survey) has many people in our culture asking themselves, “How did we get on this handcar? And where are we headed?
Hearing stories told leads to the development of empathy. And empathy is essential for all ethical decision making. I have been talking about this for more than thirty years. Recently other folks have begun to say the same thing. I am pleased by that, ’cause I’m not gonna live forever. Check out P.J. Manney’s article “Empathy in the Time of Technology” in the September, 2008 Journal of Evolution and Technology. (http://jetpress.org/v19/manney.htm if you want to read the entire article, especially the interesting part about the development of ‘mirror neurons’.)
Please join me for a discussion of how storytelling contributes to the development of ethical behavior on this Pod-cast, but also in your guilds and story circles and list serves. In a time of national financial hardship, it behooves us as tellers to be able to challenge people’s thinking about the importance of story and it’s role in right brain development. Storytelling is neither fluff nor foolishness. It is how we change the world “one listener at a time.”
Oh, and by the way, if you happen to be a attorney, state trooper, loan officer or IRS agent or some other form of left brain-er, it is the key to learning to “think outside the box”, which is imperative if America is to remain an economic power… (Daniel Pink, A Whole New Mind: How Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future. Riverhead Books, 2006.)…but, that’s another story.

A Short Biography
Designated an American Masterpiece Touring Artist by the NEA, Elizabeth Ellis grew up in the Appalachian Mountains. A children’s librarian at Dallas Public Library before becoming a professional storyteller, the “Divine Miss E” is a versatile, riveting teller of Appalachian and Texas tales and stories of heroic American women, though her personal stories are arguably her best. Invariably hilarious and poignant, she is a repeated favorite at the National Storytelling Festival. Selected a Listener’s Choice at the 30th Anniversary of the National Storytelling Festival, she is a recipient of the John Henry Faulk Award from the Texas Storytelling Association and the Circle of Excellence Award from the National Storytelling Network. She has mesmerized nearly a million children in her thirty-year career as a professional storyteller.
Elizabeth is also well known for her workshops, which offer training for beginning and seasoned storytellers. Inviting the Wolf In: Thinking About Difficult Stories, which she co-authored with Loren Niemi has been described by NAPRA ReView as a “great leap forward in the literature of how to put stories together with art and truth”. It received a Storytelling World Award.
Jay O’Callahan says, “Elizabeth Ellis’ voice sounds like chocolate tastes.” Her stories are just as addictive as chocolate. A mother and grandmother, she makes her home in Dallas. www.elizabethellis.com