Story by Story

Join West Virginian Adam Booth as he tells Mr. Patches, an original story of the 1990s from his Appalachian 20th Century series. With a goal to illuminate the Appalachian experience over the course of a hundred years, Adam's Appalachian 20th Century is a cycle of original program-length neo-traditional stories about our people and their situations, incorporating two traditional tales, actual historical events, and regional culture and folklore.

Adam Booth is the 2022 West Virginia Folk Artist of the Year, awarded at the Governor’s Arts Awards. Adam blends traditional mountain folklore, music, and an awareness of contemporary Appalachia to create original, forward-thinking story artistry. Adam’s new multidisciplinary program The Heron’s Journey is currently featured on the 2024-2025 Mid Atlantic Arts Touring Roster. As a nationally touring artist, his professional telling appearances include premiere storytelling events across the United States, including the Kennedy Center Millennium Stage, the International Storytelling Center, the National Storytelling Festival, the Timpanogos Storytelling Festival, the Appalachian Studies Association Conference, the National Storytelling Conference, the National Academy of Medicine, the National Academy of Sciences, and as a Spoken Word Resident at the Banff Centre (Alberta, Canada). He is a member of the Recording Academy and his recordings have received multiple national honors, including a Parents’ Choice Gold Award. Adam serves as the inaugural Storyteller-In-Residence at Shepherd University and is the founding artistic director of Speak Story Series (https://speakstoryseries.com/), a premier destination for storytelling in concert.

True Fictionalist is a bizarre bazaar of hilarious fairytales, reupholstered folk stories, and tales too tall to be believed! Join multi-award-winning storyteller Paul Strickland as he guides you through a new batch of funny, thoughtful fabrications in an entertaining evening of stories that may not be factual but just might ring true to you. 

Paul Strickland is a professional storyteller and theatre artist living in Kentucky. He has well over 7 hours of unique stories in his repertoire, including reupholstered folk tales, fairytales for adults and future adults, tall-tales, and even historical stories that just happened to have never happened.

Paul was a Teller-in-Residence at the International Storytelling Center in 2024. He was a FEATURED TELLER: NEW VOICE at the National Storytelling Festival in 2023. He was also a Featured Teller at the Timpanogos Storytelling Festival in September 2023 and has been a featured teller at several major storytelling festivals, including the Cave Run Storytelling Festival in 2022.

In November 2018, he made his New York City stage debut Off-Broadway at the SoHo Playhouse with his shadow and flashlight ghost story play 13 Dead Dreams of Eugene.

Always adapting to whatever audience is in front of him, Paul loves telling stories in every imaginable environment, from comedy clubs to elementary and middle schools, corporate events, and even two prisons - where he was NOT an inmate at the time.

Collections of his stories have won "Best of Fest" honors more than 18 times at Fringe Theatre Festivals in the United States and Canada. Selections from his comedy performance Levels of Difficulty are still played nearly every day on SiriusXM radio.

In A Thousand Doorways, Diane Edgecomb weaves her dramatic journey to record the last Kurdish storytellers and the mysterious folktales of the Kurds into a heartfelt testament to the power of compassionate action to bring about change in this world.

Author of A Fire in My Heart, the first book of Kurdish folktales to be published in English, Diane Edgecomb is one of America’s leading storytellers, winner of the ORACLE award for Storytelling Excellence in the Northeast and the National Circle of Excellence. A transformational teller with a rich background in the theatre arts, Diane’s dynamic storytelling embraces elements of theatre, movement, and song bringing each piece vividly to life. A featured teller on NPR and winner of a Year’s Best Performance award for her theater work in Boston, Diane’s storytelling has toured throughout the United States and internationally for over thirty years, including the Edinburgh Fringe where her performances received five star reviews.

Diane also focuses on events that bring people into relationship with nature through a rich weave of narrative, music, and song. From performances in the landscape to mythic explorations of nature through seasonal tales, these performances show us how folkloric stories, with their present-oriented way of seeing, tune us to the living presence and meaning to be found in nature. 

Keynotes and workshops on the power of story often accompany Diane’s performances, inspiring a renewed vision for our world as well as encouraging each person’s expressive and narrative abilities.

Registration begins June 1.

In Tellin' it True, Valerie Tutson shares carefully researched African American history, traditional African American folklore, and tales from her own life. Her authentic and compelling storytelling is sure to engage you!

Valerie Tutson graduated from Brown University with a self-designed major, Storytelling as a Communications Art, and a Masters in Theatre. Valerie received an honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from Rhode Island College. She has received numerous awards for her work, including the Pell Award for Artistic Excellence from Trinity Repertory Theatre in Providence, Rhode Island. Since 1991, Valerie has traveled the country and world teaching, gathering, and sharing stories and songs. Her repertoire includes folktales, personal and historical stories with an emphasis on black traditions, and first-person Bible stories. She works in all sorts of settings, from schools, libraries, and festivals to churches, conferences, businesses, and universities. Valerie is a founding member and executive/festival director of the Rhode Island Black Storytellers and FUNDA FEST: A Celebration of Black Storytelling.

Registration begins July 1.

Join Johnny Moses as he presents Traditional and Contemporary Stories from the Northwest Coast.

Johnny Moses is a Tulalip Native American raised in the remote Nuu-chah-nulth village of Ohiat on the west coast of Vancouver Island, B.C., Canada. He was raised in the traditional ways by his grandparents and sent by his elders to share their teachings with all people. Johnny is a master storyteller, oral historian, traditional healer, and respected spiritual leader.

Johnny, whose traditional name is Whis.stem.men.knee (Walking Medicine Robe), carries the Si.Si.Wiss (sacred breath, sacred life) medicine teachings and healing ceremonies of his Northwest Coast people.

Fluent in eight Native languages, he is a traveling ambassador for Northwest Coast cultures. He shares the knowledge and richness of his spiritual and cultural traditions with people across the United States and Canada through storytelling, lectures and workshops.

Johnny has been a featured storyteller at hundreds of venues, including the National Storytelling Festival (Jonesborough, Tennessee), Northwest Folklife Festival (Seattle, Washington), Talking Island Festival (Honolulu, Hawaii), Three Apples Festival (Harvard, Massachusetts), and the Sierra Storytellers Festival (Nevada City, California).

Between 1981-85, Johnny taught the Coast Salish traditional songs and dances to a group of children at the Tulalip Reservation, many of whom were members of his family. They became known as the Tulalip Coast Salish Powwow Club and ended up performing the dances at many local schools and cultural events.

Registration begins August 1.

Experience the precarious high-wire act that is caregiving for a beloved as Beth Horner presents Taking Care: Raucous Humor and Tender Courage. Juggling hilarity with heartbreak and staggering exhaustion with deepest love, Beth encounters the unexpected in a race against time.

Noted for her vivacious stage presence, comic sensibility, and warm, energetic style, storyteller Beth Horner possesses a repertoire of stories that has been called “heartfelt, articulate, and truthful.”

She has performed multiple times at the National Storytelling Festival, for NASA, on Live From National Geographic, for the International Art of Storytelling Festival, the Starlight Educational Foundation of Taiwan, and for Lyrics & Lore: A Weekend with Songwriters & Storytellers at Dollywood’s DreamMore Resort. Beth loved conducting multiple workshops for NASA Engineers and Astrobiologists and serving as narrative consultant for the NASA/Johnson Space Center Story Mining project for which she collected the stories of the scientists behind the Apollo Space Missions.

Recently, Beth was honored to perform for Solo Arts Heal, produced by San Francisco’s Marsh Theatre, and to present Storytelling: A Heart to Heart Connection for the American Parkinson Disease Association.

A National Storytelling Network Circle of Excellence Oracle Award recipient, Beth is a 40-year internationally touring spoken word artist who is sought after as a storyteller, teaching artist, consultant, and narrative coach. 

Her love of all kinds of stories – traditional, literary, family, musical, historical, and hysterical – makes her a joyous emissary into the world of story.

Registration begins September 1.