By: Maryann Yin,
on 12/31/2015
Do you need a boost of inspiration for the new year?
We’ve compiled a list of five videos featuring writers who have given TED talks throughout the past year. Our list includes StoryCorps founder Dave Isay, biographer Aimee Molloy, book designer Chip Kidd, blogger Ann Morgan, and Newbery Medalist Linda Sue Park.
For more talks, the TED organization has created the “10 talks from authors” playlist. Who do you nominate to speak at future TED conferences?
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By: Maryann Yin,
on 3/26/2015
StoryCorps founder and author Dave Isay has been chosen as the winner of this year’s TED Prize. This award comes with a one million dollar cash prize.
Isay recently delivered a talk at the TED 2015 conference called “Everyone Around You Has a Story the World Needs to Hear.” We’ve embedded a video showcasing the entire presentation above—what do you think?
Traditionally, those who win the TED Prize share a wish with the world. According to the TED Blog, Isay hopes “that you will help us to take everything we’ve learned through StoryCorps and bring it to the world so that anyone, anywhere, can easily record a meaningful interview with another human being, which then will be archived for history.”
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By: Sarah Darer Littman,
on 5/4/2010
On Friday morning, March 17th, 2006, the National Public Radio program Morning Edition broadcast a brief clip from an interview of me done at the StoryCorps booth in Grand Central Station, New York, by my then twelve year-old son Joshua, who was diagnosed with Aspergers Syndrome, an autistic spectrum disorder, when he was five years old.
The response was overwhelming.
“Our best friends are a couple who have a boy with Asperger's. I wrote to the father this morning and told him he had to go to NPR and listen to the story. My exact words to him were, "I was in love with this kid." … Man...another morning driving to work with tears in my eyes.”
“I have never had this happen before, but when I was listening to the Story Corp interview and heard your son ask you if he had met your expectations as a son and your tender reply tears ran down my cheeks. Your answer to his question is the most loving thing I think I have ever heard a parent say to a child. How blessed he is to have you for a mother and how blessed this world is to have you in it”
“Well, I've had my share of "driveway moments" in 25+ years of listening to public radio, but your Story Corps segment with Joshua this morning was a first for me: a "burst into tears while driving 70 mph moment."
“I’m the father of a 10 year-old son who was (finally) diagnosed with Aspergers a year ago…After listening to Joshua’s questions and Sarah’s responses, I feel for the first time that my son, my wife, and I are not alone in dealing with these challenges.”
“I am a principal of an elementary school and wish I had more parents like you. You see the qualities that Joshua has, and don’t seem to focus on the one he doesn’t.”
This was just the beginning. As a fiction author by trade, I’m not short on imagination, but the reaction to our interview was beyond anything I’d have envisaged. In fact, our story turned out to be one of the top three most responded-to StoryCorps segments in 2006.
It wasn’t just the sheer volume of e-mails that amazed me.It was the depth of the responses - the heartfelt connection people seemed to feel upon hearing this brief snippet of conversation between my son Joshua and me.
The father of a five year-old with autism wrote: “I found your interview very uplifting! It gave me the sense that we can get through this journey together…Please remain vocal about your experiences and share them with other people in your position. It helps!”
What’s more, it wasn’t just parents of children on the autistic spectrum who wrote - our conversation seemed to strike a chord with parents in general. One woman wrote of her frustration trying to communicate with her son, and concluded: “Thank you for allowing strangers to peek into your life. It has inspired me to work harder to become a better mother to my son.”
All I can say is that she didn’t peek into our life at 7:15 am on a school morning, when I can usually be found shouting something along the lines of: “Aren’t you dressed yet? I woke you up half an hour ago! Stop winding up your sister! And feed the dog, already!!”
So how did Joshua and I end up at StoryCorps in the first place? Well, every school vacation since my kids were little, I’ve tried to have a one-on-one day with each of them, doing something fun.
One of the many difficult things a working mother of more than one child is the feeling that there simply isn’t enough of you to go around. You can multiply that feeling by however many hours a week you have to work to earn a living, because even if you’re fortunate enough to be a writer, working from your basement lair, your kids won’t be thinking, Gee, I’m so lucky that my mom works downstairs instead of having to commute into New York every day. No, they’ll still resent the fact that you’re in the middle of a phone interview w
By: Sarah Darer Littman,
on 2/20/2008
About this time two years ago, my son and I visted the StoryCorps booth in Grand Central Station and he interviwed me, asking the most amazing questions. An edited clip of that interview was played a month later on NPR's Morning Edition, to an absolutely incredible response.
Last week I went back to the StoryCorps booth and finally got to meet Michael Garofalo in person. Michael is a Senior Producer at StoryCorps, and he's the guy who worked so hard to edit our interview down from 40 minutes to 3 minutes in compelling yet extremely sensitive way. He asked me some follow up question about how we came to do the interview, what it felt like to hear ourselves on the radio, and how we were affected by the response to the piece. Some of this will be used for a promotional clip on NPR.
Michael told me how everyone at StoryCorps loves J and wanted to meet him, and since it's vacation week I offered to bring the star of the show to the StoryCorps offices in Brooklyn. So yesterday Son, The Webmeister and I headed into Fort Greene.
It was incredibly cool to get to meet the people who get me crying practically every Friday morning when I hear the StoryCorps clips on NPR. Michael showed us how they edited our piece - and the authors amongst us will related to the fact that for this 3 minute piece they did 19 edits! J really enjoyed seeing how they bleeped out the name of his 7th grade nemesis.
In a world obsessed with celebrity, the work that StoryCorps does is critically important, because every week when we listen to these brief recollections from the lives of everyday, average people we realize that everyone has a story to tell, and, perhaps more importantly, that everyday, average people are anything but everyday and average. The word heroism has become overused in recent years, but when listening to clips on StoryCorps I find myself marvelling at the quiet fortitude of people I might never otherwise have known.
Here's J and me with StoryCorps founder Dave Isay (the tall one) and Michael Garofalo (the less tall but still taller than me one).
Meanwhile, Daughter was at home with Mary Poppins and she decided to surprise me by making dinner. It was all very secretive, but she ended up creating what we shall hereinafter refer to as Kick Butt Meatloaf. (I'm sure you were wondering how meatloaf and StoryCorps were related...) I've never been a big fan of meatloaf (the dinner meat, not the singer, whom I found somewhat entertaining) but Daughter's meatloaf was a culinary delight that might make me rethink my previous antipathy.
And now, Reasons to love the Webmeister number #189: He's a techno-geek. (He, J and I had a conversation in the car on the way to Brooklyn about the difference between a nerd and a geek. Conclusion: A Geek is a Nerd with fashion sense.)
So I'm writing this blog from the car as we travel along I-80 heading towards Scrotum Scotrun , PA. You will, no doubt, be relieved to hear that I am not driving at the same time. The Webmeister managed to rig up this thing so we've got wireless internet in the car. Pretty Kewl, huh?
By: msedano,
on 3/26/2007
Denver teatro readings.
East LA Rep extends Black Butterfly run.
Tia Chucha's reopening
RealtalkLA Launches magazine to hit streets in May.
Watch out Tu Ciudad! There's a new lifestyle magazine coming to town and it's pointing in your direction. The big difference is RealTalk LA is a free monthly magazine and website that intends to carve its nickle out of the LA Times, LA Free Press, Pasadena Weekly.
Publisher Jay Levin and staff threw an open house recently to launch the magazine. Located a mile north of the Spring Street headquarters of the Los Angeles Times, the old industrial building has been spiffed up into a modern-day information factory.
A magnificent stage set painting by Margaret Garcia greets the visitor to Real TalkLA's studio. It's a warren of spaces partitioned into ten foot walls. Bundles of cable snake their way in the shadows at the walltops. Muy high tech place, a web and print design studio like this. A panorama of Garcia's larger paintings lines the corridors. I turn a corner and there is Margaret and her prima Cookie.
Real Talk LA's web executive Kamren Curiel admires Garcia's work and took the opportunity to sit at the tequila tasting table and chat about Curiel's collection. Publisher Jay Levin stopped at Margaret's table to say "hello." Culture Clash's Ric Salinas arrived a few moments later, and the actor and publisher shared a few quick laughs.
Real Talk LA is not Chicana Chicano media, but it'll have an influence and be influenced by. The target audience is 600,000 mid-twenties to low fifties second and third generation ethnics of all flavors. Gente who pump at family rates around $70,000 a year into the local advertisers' pockets.
In Los Angeles, this is code language for a lot of Mexicans. The publisher knows Black and Asian communities make up a lucrative chunk of Real Talk LA's market. Given the look and feel of the launch, there's almost a guarantee of better diversity here, than say, the LA Times, whose westside bias censors arts coverage of the Northeast and Eastside of town. Lastima. Pendejos. And with color and polished paper covers, a better value than newsprint, so wacha LA Free Press and Pasadena Weekly.
Advertising positioned in a package like this gains instant credibility. Levin's slick package has the gloss and high style to make the product sizzle, in so far as the team can put forth a quality piece month after month after month. The temptation to lean to the west, toward Hollywood must loom in the editor's mind.
Levin has good people working with him. Culture Clash, for example, is discussing a monthly humor and culture column, according to Salinas. La Bloga hopes the magazine and website will feature monthly literature and reading columns. Real Talk LA's staff will be the secret ingredient. Judging by the open house, most of these are: Young. Attractive. Dynamic go-getters. I'm looking forward to seeing what they can do.
mvs
Denver Troupe Brings Teatro to the Frontrange
email from the Troupe to Manuel Ramos...
Su Teatro announces Spring Reading Series
El Centro Su Teatro proudly announces its Spring Reading Series—a vehicle for new play development aimed at discovering and nurturing new and innovative playwriting talent through live reading, examination, discussion, and critique.
The Spring Reading Series will kickoff Wednesday, March 28 at 7pm at the Laughing Bean Café on 10th and Santa Fe, and the series will continue each Wednesday through April 18—same time, same place. Su Teatro company actors and guest artists will read the select playscripts and audience members will be invited to participate in talkback discussions.
Leading off the series will be “Braided Sorrow” by Marisela Treviño Orta—a poetic meditation on the unsolved murders of female maquiladora workers in Ciudad Juarez. “Braided Sorrow” won the prestigious 2006 University of California Irvine Chicano/Latino Literary Prize, and it will receive a full production this fall, kicking off Su Teatro’s 2007-2008 35th Anniversary Season.
“Braided Sorrow” will be followed by “Las Monedas de Ismael” by Aaron Vieyra (April 4), “The Kinetic End” by Valarie Castillo (April 11), and “El Blanco” by John Kuebler, which was a finalist for the 2007 Rocky Mountain Theatre Association Playwriting Award (April 18). All four plays explore contemporary themes that challenge our beliefs and test our resolve, including economic exploitation, alcoholism, terminal illness, and identity politics.
For more information about Su Teatro’s Spring Reading Series, please contact El Centro Su Teatro at (303) 296-0219 or [email protected]. Also visit www.suteatro.org, www.myspace.com/elcentrosuteatro, and www.myspace.com/thelaughingbeancafe
East LA Rep captivated everyone who saw its staging of Sandra Cisneros' House on Mango Street.
EAST LA REPERTORY THEATRE COMPANY PRESENTS...
Black Butterfly, Jaguar Girl, Pinata Woman and other Super Hero Girls, Like Me.
created by Luis Alfaro
written by Maria Elena Cervantes, Sandra C. Munoz, & Marisela Norte
Feb 23 - April 1, 2007
Friday & Saturdays @ 8 pm
Sundays @ 3 pm
Admission: $8-20 Sliding Scale
El Gallo Plaza Theater
4545 E. Cesar Chavez Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90022
For info and to RSVP please call (323) 276- 1868
[email protected]
www.eastlarep.com or www.myspace.com/eastlarep
The upsanddowns of bricks and mortar indie bookstores have more ups than downs this week, in news from the San Fernando Valley...
email from Luis Rodriguez to Daniel Olivas
