Kevin Cordi is an American teacher, storyteller and author who has been awarded The Film Advisory Board of Excellence Award and The Storytelling World Award. He is a regular performer at storytelling festivals including the National Storytelling Festival. Cordi started the Youth Special Interest Group for the National Storytelling Network and founded the Voices Across America Youth Storytelling Project. Cordi also wrote the book "Playing with Stories: Story crafting for storytellers, writers, teachers and other imaginative thinkers" in 2014. He is the founder of the international StoryBox Project. Since 1995, he actively sends StoryBoxes loading with stories all over the world and they travel from place to place collecting more stories. This project has been mirrored all over the country and the world. For seven years he served as the Co-director for the Columbus Area Writing Project at the Ohio State University. He is currently teaching at Ohio University in Lancaster, Ohio. He was commissioned as the first Academic Storyteller in Residence for The Ohio State University. He used stories and narrative understanding to build programs for equity and social justice with the Multicultural Center at The Ohio State University. He is currently serving on the Advisory Panel for Teaching Tolerance with the Southern Law Poverty Center.
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Storytelling is the social and cultural activity of sharing stories, sometimes with improvisation, theatrics or embellishment. Every culture has its own stories or narratives, which are shared as a means of entertainment, education, cultural preservation or instilling moral values. Crucial elements of stories and storytelling include plot, characters and narrative point of view. The term "storytelling" can refer specifically to oral storytelling but also broadly to techniques used in other media to unfold or disclose the narrative of a story.
Digital storytelling is a short form of digital media production that allows everyday people to create and share their stories online. The method is frequently used in schools, museums, libraries, social work and health settings, and communities. They are thought to have educational, democratizing and even therapeutic effects.
The Southern Ohio Storytelling Festival is an annual storytelling festival held Thursday through Saturday after Labor Day in Chillicothe, Ohio. Local, regional and nationally known storytellers are invited to perform their favorite stories for thousands of school children and storytelling enthusiasts. A board of community volunteers and local/regional storytellers makes up the 503(c) non-profit organization that is responsible for organizing and overseeing the festival.
Antonio Sacre is an American author, solo performer, and storyteller. He writes and performs internationally, in English and Spanish.
Andy Offutt Irwin is an American storyteller, singer-songwriter, and humorist. Born and raised in Covington, Georgia, a small town outside of Atlanta, Irwin began his career in 1984 with an improvisational comedy troupe at Walt Disney World. After five years he shifted to performing as a singer-songwriter, touring the Southeast. In the mid-1990s, Irwin branched into performances for children.
Augusta Braxton Baker was an American librarian and storyteller. She was known for her contributions to children's literature, especially regarding the portrayal of Black Americans in works for children.
Carmen Agra Deedy is an author of children’s literature, storyteller and radio contributor.
Donald Davis is an American storyteller, author and minister. Davis had a twenty-year career as a minister before he became a professional storyteller. He has recorded over 25 storytelling albums and written several books. His long career as a teller and his promotion of the cultural importance of storytelling through seminars and master classes has led to Davis being dubbed the "dean of storytelling".
The National Storytelling Festival is held the first full weekend of October in Jonesborough, Tennessee at the International Storytelling Center. The National Storytelling Festival was founded by Jimmy Neil Smith, a high school journalism teacher, in 1973. It has grown over the years to become a major festival both in the United States and internationally.
Kealoha is a poet and storyteller based in Hawaii. He was the first Poet Laureate of Hawaii and the first poet to perform at a Hawaii governor’s inauguration. In 2022 he received a Poets Laureate Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets.
Lynette (Lyn) Ford, an American storyteller, teaching artist, author and creative narrative workshop presenter was the first storyteller in the state of Ohio to be nominated for a Governor's Award for the Arts. She is a regular performer at regional and national storytelling festivals and conferences, including the National Storytelling Festival, Hawaii's Talk Story Festival and the Timpanogos Storytelling Festival. Lyn has also shared keynote presentations, performances and workshops in Australia and Ireland, and for the Transformative Language Arts Network's and Ohio Literacy Resource Center's annual conferences and events.
Taffy Thomas, MBE is a storyteller, based in Grasmere in the English Lake District.
Fran Stallings is an American storyteller for people of all ages. She has performed at numerous national and international storytelling festivals, in schools and libraries, and on the radio. She performs primarily folktales from around the world. She has authored several audio recordings and books of stories and songs.
Charlemae Hill Rollins was a pioneering librarian, writer and storyteller in the area of African-American literature. During her thirty-one years as head librarian of the children's department at the Chicago Public Library as well as after her retirement, she instituted substantial reforms in children's literature.
Hugh Morgan Hill, also known as Brother Blue, was an American educator, storyteller, actor, musician, and street performer based principally in the Boston area. After serving as First Lieutenant from 1943 to 1946 in the segregated United States Army in World War II and being honorably discharged, he received a BA from Harvard College in 1948, was accepted into the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) before transferring to receive a MFA from the Yale School of Drama and a Ph.D. from the Union Institute. While performing frequently at U.S. National Storytelling Festivals and flown abroad by organizations and patrons from England to Russia and the Bahamas, Brother Blue regularly performed on the streets around Cambridge, most notably in Harvard Square. He was the Official Storyteller of Boston and of Cambridge by resolutions of both city councils.
Jimmy Neil Smith, is founder and president emeritus of the International Storytelling Center (ISC) in Jonesborough, Tennessee. In 1973, Smith, then a local journalism teacher, hosted the first National Storytelling Festival as a way to build regional and national awareness of Jonesborough. Smith's efforts led to a revival of storytelling in the US. Jonesborough is today referred to as the Storytelling Capital of the World.
Mary Louise Defender Wilson, also known by her Dakotah name Wagmuhawin, is a storyteller, traditionalist, historian, scholar and educator of the Dakotah/Hidatsa people and a former director working in health care organizations. Her cultural work has been recognized with a National Heritage Fellowship in 1999 and a United States Artists fellowship in 2015, among many other honors.
Margaret Read MacDonald is an American storyteller, folklorist, and award-winning children's book author. She has published more than 65 books, of stories and about storytelling, which have been translated into many languages. She has performed internationally as a storyteller, is considered a "master storyteller", and has been dubbed a "grand dame of storytelling". She focuses on creating "tellable" folktale renditions, which enable readers to share folktales with children easily. MacDonald has been a member of the board of the National Storytelling Network and president of the Children's Folklore Section of the American Folklore Society.
Tim Tingle is a member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma an author and storyteller of twenty books.
Pleasant DeSpain is an international storyteller, world traveler, and author of multicultural story collections and picture books, many of which are used in elementary schools and libraries as multicultural teaching aids. He has performed in more than 3,000 schools, theaters, conventions, libraries, and churches in America, Canada, Mexico, Thailand, Southeast Asia, and Central America.