National Storytelling Festival
   HOME
*





National Storytelling Festival
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. History In 1973, Jimmy Neil Smith, a high school journalism teacher, and a carload of students heard Grand Ole Opry regular Jerry Clower spin a tale over the radio about coon hunting in Mississippi. Smith was inspired by that event to create a story telling festival in Northeast Tennessee. In October 1973, the first National Storytelling Festival was held in Jonesborough, Tennessee. Hay bales and wagons were the stages, and audience and tellers together didn't number more than 60. Two years after the first festival, Smith founded the National Association for the Preservation and Perpetuation of Storytelling (NAPPS), an organ ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Jonesborough, Tennessee
Jonesborough (historically also Jonesboro) is a town in, and the county seat of, Washington County, Tennessee, in the Southeastern United States. Its population was 5,860 as of 2020. It is "Tennessee's oldest town". Jonesborough is part of the Johnson City metropolitan statistical area, which is a component of the Johnson City– Kingsport–Bristol, TN and VA combined statistical area – commonly known as the " Tri-Cities" region. History Located in the far northeast corner of the state, Jonesborough was founded by European Americans in 1779, 17 years before Tennessee became a state and while the area was under the jurisdiction of North Carolina. It was named after North Carolina legislator Willie Jones, who had supported the state's westward expansion across the Appalachian Mountains. The town was renamed "Jonesboro" for a period of time, but it took back its historic spelling. Jonesborough was originally a part of the Washington District. In 1784, it became t ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Donald Davis (storyteller)
Donald Davis (born 1944) 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".Piddlers Festival Brings a Crowd
by Holli Keaton for the '' Messenger'', January 26, 2008. Retrieved January 28, 2008.


Background

Donald Davis was born in
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Storytelling Festivals
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. Historical perspective Storytelling, intertwined with the development of mythologies, predates writing. The earliest forms of storytelling were usually oral, combined with gestures and expressions. Some archaeologists believe that rock art, in addition to a role in religious rituals, may have served as a form of storytelling for many ancient cultures. The Australian aboriginal people painted symbols which also appear in stories ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Tourist Attractions In Washington County, Tennessee
Tourism is travel for pleasure or business; also the theory and practice of touring (other), touring, the business of attracting, accommodating, and entertaining tourists, and the business of operating tour (other), tours. The World Tourism Organization defines tourism more generally, in terms which go "beyond the common perception of tourism as being limited to holiday activity only", as people "travelling to and staying in places outside their usual environment for not more than one consecutive year for leisure and not less than 24 hours, business and other purposes". Tourism can be Domestic tourism, domestic (within the traveller's own country) or International tourism, international, and international tourism has both incoming and outgoing implications on a country's balance of payments. Tourism numbers declined as a result of a strong economic slowdown (the late-2000s recession) between the second half of 2008 and the end of 2009, and in consequence of t ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

American Folklore
American folklore encompasses the folklores that have evolved in the present-day United States since Europeans arrived in the 16th century. While it contains much in the way of Native American tradition, it is not wholly identical to the tribal beliefs of any community of native people. Folklore consists of legends, music, oral history, proverbs, jokes, popular beliefs, fairy tales, stories, tall tales, and customs that are the traditions of a culture, subculture, or group. It is also the set of practices through which those expressive genres are shared. Native American folklore Native American cultures are rich in myths and legends that explain natural phenomena and the relationship between humans and the spirit world. According to Barre Toelken, feathers, beadwork, dance steps and music, the events in a story, the shape of a dwelling, or items of traditional food can be viewed as icons of cultural meaning.Toelken, Barrebr>''The Anguish of Snails'', Utah State University Press ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Festivals In Tennessee
A festival is an event ordinarily celebrated by a community and centering on some characteristic aspect or aspects of that community and its religion or cultures. It is often marked as a local or national holiday, mela, or eid. A festival constitutes typical cases of glocalization, as well as the high culture-low culture interrelationship. Next to religion and folklore, a significant origin is agricultural. Food is such a vital resource that many festivals are associated with harvest time. Religious commemoration and thanksgiving for good harvests are blended in events that take place in autumn, such as Halloween in the northern hemisphere and Easter in the southern. Festivals often serve to fulfill specific communal purposes, especially in regard to commemoration or thanking to the gods, goddesses or saints: they are called patronal festivals. They may also provide entertainment, which was particularly important to local communities before the advent of mass-produced entert ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

East Tennessee State University
East Tennessee State University (ETSU) is a public research university in Johnson City, Tennessee. Although it is part of the State University and Community College System of Tennessee, the university is governed by an institutional Board of Trustees. , it is the fourth largest university in the state and has off-campus centers in nearby Kingsport, Elizabethton, and Sevierville. ETSU is classified among "R2: Doctoral Universities – High research activity." It hosts the James H. Quillen College of Medicine which is often ranked as one of the top schools in the United States for rural medicine and primary care education; the Bill Gatton College of Pharmacy, the College of Nursing, the College of Public Health, and the recently formed College of Clinical and Rehabilitative Health Sciences. Unique programs include an accredited program in Bluegrass, Old Time, and Country Music, America's lone master's degree in Storytelling, and the Appalachian Studies programs, focused on the ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Kathryn Tucker Windham
Kathryn Tucker Windham (née Tucker, June 2, 1918 – June 12, 2011) was an American storyteller, author, photographer, folklorist, and journalist. She was born in Selma, Alabama, and grew up in nearby Thomasville. Tucker got her first writing job at the age of 12, reviewing movies for her cousin's small town newspaper, ''The Thomasville Times''. She earned a B.A. degree from Huntingdon College in 1939. Soon after graduating she became the first woman journalist for the '' Alabama Journal''. Starting in 1944, she worked for ''The Birmingham News''. In 1946 she married Amasa Benjamin Windham, with whom she had three children. In 1956 she went to work at the '' Selma Times-Journal'', where she won several Associated Press awards for her writing and photography. She died on June 12, 2011, ten days after her 93rd birthday. She was a longtime friend of artist Nall, who introduced her works to the art world at large. Ghost stories Kathryn Tucker Windham wrote a series of boo ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Sheila Kay Adams
Sheila Kay Adams is an American storyteller, author, and musician from the Sodom Laurel community in Madison County, North Carolina. Background A seventh-generation ballad singer, storyteller, and claw-hammer banjo player, Sheila Kay Adams was born and raised in the Sodom Laurel community of Madison County, North Carolina, an area renowned for its unbroken tradition of unaccompanied singing of traditional southern Appalachian ballads that dates back to the early Scots/Irish and English Settlers in the mid-17th century. Adams learned to sing from her great-aunt Dellie Chandler Norton and other notable singers in the community such as Dillard Chandler and members of the Wallin Family. She began performing in public in her teens, and throughout her career she has performed at festivals, events, music camps, and workshops around the United States and the United Kingdom. In 1975, Adams graduated from Mars Hill College. In 2003 she was named Alumna of the Year and later received ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  




Andy Offutt Irwin
Andy Offutt Irwin (born December 14, 1957) 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. Irwin continued to perform as a singer-songwriter and added storytelling to these performances, usually telling one story (about ten to twenty-five minutes in length) during a show. In the fall of 2004, he decided to pursue storytelling as a career and quickly achieved national prominence. Irwin now appears regularly in storytelling festivals across the United States. As of 2022, he has released 13 albums which feature stories, songs or whistling and has collected numerous awards for them. In 2013, Irwin received the Circle of Excellence Award from the National Sto ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Syd Lieberman
Sydney Lieberman (1944 – May 12, 2015) was a noted American storyteller who began performing professionally in 1982. He was born in Chicago. He was a frequent performer at the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, Tennessee. In 2007, Lieberman became the first professional storyteller in the United States to make all tracks from his previously released 14 CDs and cassettes available as a free download from his website via a Creative commons license (by-nc-nd). He died after a stroke in Evanston, Illinois in 2015. Commissions Lieberman was known for his ability to write and tell the story behind historical events. He created performances commissioned by the city of Johnstown, Pennsylvania, the Smithsonian Institution (for the National Air and Space Museum), Van Andel Museum Center, NASA, and Historic Philadelphia. ; Twelve Wheels on Mars In late 2003, NASA and the International Storytelling Center commissioned Lieberman to tell the story of the Mars Exploratio ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Jay O'Callahan
Jay O'Callahan is an American storyteller known for his performances at national and international storytelling festivals and in theaters worldwide. He performs material of his own authorship and is known for his large-scale oral stories that explore the rich details and nuances of different cultures and time periods through the perceptions of a central narrative character. He has recorded many of his oral stories and has written picture books based on several of his tales. O'Callahan's storytelling style is quiet and understated, and he does not use props, sets, costumes, or music in his performances. He is known for his ability to create vivid characters through the use of his voice and to create a sense of wonder and magic in his stories by depicting everyday events in a way that makes them seem larger-than-life. Biography O'Callahan grew up in Brookline, Massachusetts, near the many hospitals of the Boston Longwood Medical Area, in a neighborhood which he has fictionalized ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]