Presidents' Day

The Library will be closed Monday, February 17, in observance of Presidents' Day.

2-18-25 Special Meeting of the PSPL Board of Trustees

Due to the cancelation of the regularly scheduled Board of Trustees meeting on Tuesday, February 11, the PSPL Board will be holding a special meeting on February 18, at 5:30 PM in the Sower Board Room. The agenda is posted here.

Story by Story

Join PSPL for Story by Story, a monthly series for adults and teens, where storytellers from around the country share stories reflecting diverse cultures, beliefs, and experiences. Performances run 45-60 minutes, followed by an up-to 30 minute discussion opportunity.

Story by Story is held in the Library’s River Room, and an American Sign Language interpreter is provided for all events. Please register for each individual event. For more information, contact Diane Dehoney at (502) 352-2665 x100 or diane@pspl.org.

Sally Perkins

Photo of storyteller Sally Perkins

If Susan B. Anthony and her pals had iPads and TikTok, would it have taken 72 years to win the vote? Listen as Sally Perkins presents Digging in Their Heels, an updated, comedic, honest, and poignant version of women’s battle for the ballot that inspires audiences to stay the course for voting justice. 

Sally Perkins is a professional storyteller, speaker, educator and trainer. She travels the country performing stories of all sorts: historical, wisdom, personal . . . even ghoulish. She’s been a featured performer at the United Solo Theatre Festival in NYC, the Indianapolis Spirit & Place Festival, the Tennessee Haunting in the Hills Festival, and the National Storytelling Network Conference.

When she’s not performing her stories, Sally is an Insight Data Storyteller for Authenticx and conducts training for businesses and organizations needing to tell their stories more effectively. She previously served on faculty at Butler University and California State University, Sacramento. Sally received both her M.A. and Ph.D. in Speech Communication and Rhetoric from the University of Kansas.

Digging in Their Heels was a top-selling show at the 2018 Indy Fringe Theatre Festival and was featured at the 2019 United Solo Theatre Festival off-Broadway, in New York City. She has performed the story for universities, theatres, law firms, businesses, and women’s organizations across the country.

Mitch Capel

Photo of storyteller Mitch Capel

Using historic research, plus the poetic genius of Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906), Mitch Capel unveils the true depth of the soul and life of this remarkable poet laureate in We Wear the Mask. Dr. Joanne Braxton, author of The Collected Poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar, wrote, “Mitch is the greatest interpreter of Dunbar’s work ever!”

The journey of Mitch Capel as a master storyteller, motivational speaker, author, poet, playwright, and comedian has been phenomenal. Born and raised in Southern Pines, North Carolina, he began storytelling professionally in 1985 and is now considered the national interpreter of the poet laureate Paul Laurence Dunbar with over 70% of the poet’s work stored to memory. He is the voice of Paul Laurence Dunbar in film and the kiosks at the Wright/Dunbar Interpretive Center in Dayton, Ohio. 

Capel brings stories to life, while plucking the strings with just the touch the human heart craves. Major publications have described him as “a word magician”, “a national treasure”, and “unexpectedly powerful”. He has performed at thousands of venues, including the National Storytelling Festival, Timpanogos Storytelling Festival, the Smithsonian’s Folklife Festival, the Signifying & Testifying Storytelling Festival, and the Kennedy Center. He was also invited to perform for two presidential inaugurations. Capel has been featured at the National Association of Black Storytelling Festival (NABS) every year since 1988 and has emceed two annual Liar's Contests for over 30 years. He has also received the Zora Neale Hurston Award, the highest award given by NABS. He attended A&T State and Howard Universities, studying speech and theater, but he calls himself, “a full-time honor student at the University of Life”.

Registration begins March 1.

Gretchen Peterson

Photo of storyteller Gretchen Peterson

Throughout history, women have fallen in love with women, but where are their folktales, their fairy tales, their myths? Well, storyteller Gretchen Peterson had to make them up! Join Gretchen as she performs three original stories: MaryRomance & Juliet, and Cassiopeia Confessed.

Born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Gretchen Peterson has lived most of her adult life in Portland, Oregon. She lived in Delaware for seven years while working as a book sales rep, and her territory included beautiful Kentucky. She also has Kentucky roots! One pair of maternal great-grandparents lived in Owensboro before moving to New Mexico in the 1890’s.

Gretchen has also worked as a bookstore clerk, administrative assistant, web editor, and ad proofer, but her true passion has always been expressing her creativity through writing, drawing, painting, calligraphy, and storytelling. 

As a storyteller, Gretchen found her niche in crafting personal stories, original folktales, fairy tales, and myths, usually with the theme of women who love women. She joined the Portland Storytellers Guild in 2014, and she wrote and performed two one-woman shows for Portland’s Fertile Ground Festival in 2018 and 2019. At the 2024 National Storytelling Network (NSN) Conference, Gretchen was a “Fringe” Storyteller. 

Gretchen’s latest creative project, “Storytelling Architecture”, combines her love of storytelling and architectural drawings.

Registration begins April 1.

Paul Strickland

Photo of storyteller Paul Strickland

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.

Registration begins May 1.

Diane Edgecomb

Photo of storyteller Diane Edgecomb

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.

Valerie Tutson

Photo of storyteller Valerie Tutson

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.

Johnny Moses

Photo of storyteller Johnny Moses

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.

Beth Horner

Photo of storyteller Beth Horner

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.

Past Storytellers

Tim Ereneta

When storyteller Tim Ereneta opens a story with the words "once upon a time," he invites listeners into worlds that never were, but still resonate with our modern lives.

Sue Roseberry

Sue Roseberry uses storytelling to introduce some wonderful people that she knows to her audiences. With every tale she says, “Welcome to my world!”

Nestor Gomez

Hear compelling true stories when Nestor Gomez takes our Story by Story stage! Sometimes, he tells about his own experiences as a person new to the United States, about his adventures working as a ride sharing driver, or his family or work related experiences.

Queen Nur

Engaging audiences with call and response and song, Queen Nur presents rooted stories of connections to her childhoodtales honoring ancestors from the African continent to familiar Black traditions in America, a personal rendering celebrating her father,

Dovie Thomason

Dovie Thomason tells with elegance, wit, passion, sly humor and astonishing vocal transformations creating a climate with the audience where laughter, learning, and respect come together.

Anne Shimojima

On December 7, 1941, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, and the Japanese American community was never the same again. Eventually, over 120,000 Japanese Americans were imprisoned behind barbed wire in incarceration camps for the crime of looking like the enemy. 

Bil Lepp

Could a story about a kid who never wins anything – not swimming races, not costume contests, not science fairs – possibly be a story that includes the water cycle, werewolves, family vacations, a trickster grandfather, long car trips, a kid who thinks he needs to change the world, and two friend

Priscilla Howe

In 2015, Priscilla Howe traveled to Bulgaria on a Fulbright Scholarship, aiming to collect trickster tales and animal stories. She did that, and so much more, including hearing stories from strangers on the street and performing in a Bulgarian storytelling and joketelling competition.

Carrie Sue Ayvar

Flowing seamlessly between Spanish and English, Carrie Sue Ayvar chooses from her large repertoire to connect people, languages, and cultures through her stories.

Kevin Kling

Humorist, playwright, and author, Kevin Kling is hailed as a Minnesota state treasure. Former Guthrie Theater artistic director Joe Dowling said that "Kevin has the ability to be genuinely funny, but he can also move you to tears.