I believe stories speak for themselves.
When performing on stage, I have felt the little tug in a new direction, as though the story I was telling knew best how it should be heard.
As a narrativist, I pay close attention to how stories guide our lives. We are meaning-making creatures who long for sense and structure. When we review our past, our decisions, and our dreams, we can trace the bright thread of our greater story. This is the scaffold of our self.
I bring both academic rigor and strong creative training to my practice.
I am not a therapist, but as a trained ritualist and teaching artist I have witnessed the profound impact story slanting can have.
Storytellers I work with dive into deep introspection to uncover new context and clarity embedded in difficult personal experiences. I work with you to help your story bloom in profound and maybe unexpected ways.
Writings
It’s just no good to describe the act of writing. You’ve probably been served one of those glossy photos of a person in starched white, smiling and tapping at computer keys or scribbling in a journal. A shapely mug of coffee is always cooling, un-drunk beside them. This isn’t an accurate image, of course. But it is dull watching a writer sit quietly alone. She tilts to rest her head in one palm. Her other hand scratches away at a notebook page. The clock ticks.
You want to hear instead what she is writing or learn the value of the words she’s putting down to paper. You want to know what it’s all about. It is hard to say why, but a lot of us keep writing despite moody isolation and occasionally hair pulling problems. There’s the fascination with world-building, the texture of the sounds, the thrill of solving that extra tricky problem.
I’ve covered the local beat at a newspaper, written academic papers I presented at conferences and published freelance travel writing, features and book reviews. Through it all, it’s the curiosity and creation that draw me on. Trying on new perspectives, seeing the world fresh and being utterly transported by story.
Storytelling
I drove two and a half hours alone to the annual storytelling festival in Ojai, CA my senior year of college. I went alone because I assumed the place would be full of grade school children. Wouldn’t my college peers consider me juvenile? Weren’t stories just for kids?
The sloped auditorium seats were full of people of all ages though. Together we watched one man play a harp while he recounted the clever problem solving of a poor man who turned his fortunes. Each of the little wink and nod adventures struck familiar chords for those of us scraping our rent and lunch money up in scrappy ways.
I had been sustained by story as a child. Through stories I traveled to faraway lands, or discovered the magic even within the ordinary world. Of course, as inspiring as writing and reading were for me, they were solitary activities. It wasn’t until I started directing live storytelling performances that the rich world of story bloomed into a place of connection and community.
Performing stories is a ritual art. The story-teller and the story-witnesses enter the space, take a journey together and return to the ordinary world changed. We are entertained or educated or utterly transformed by story.
I had been part of theater and dance performance for much of my life. The electric energy though of telling a story while looking people full in the face and including them directly was a bright revelation. We were creating the story together.
The local paper wrote about the first storytelling show I produced. They called it a refreshing, new sort of performance. Yes, we had a live post-rock, experimental band, and modern dance choreography. But the core of the show was actually one of the oldest sorts of arts. Storytelling has been part of community for at least as long as we’ve kept records. It was the way we held history before we wrote it down.
It is this co-creative spirit that feeds my storytelling. When I stand before a group of story-witnesses, I can watch the effect of the story. It shows in the widening of a person’s eyes, the surprised gasp or the sudden dawning of a smile. I turn the story a little this way or that like a fractal gem that catches the light and shines it back.
Bone Girl
Excerpt
An example of Story Slant in action! This piece is from my full-length speculative memoir in progress, “Ghosting.”
Water, Water, Everywhere
Essay
This piece was the winner of the Oregon Quarterly essay contest. It is a model of my new passion for speculative memoir and another fun way to explore Story Slanting.
Giving Spirit
Profile: Melinda Gates
I wrote for Alaska Airlines Beyond Magazine for about five years and covered many bookish topics. This cover feature on Melinda French Gates was not overly bookish, but it was a fascinating exploration of creative mission and the benefit to embracing failure.
Life By the Book
This piece on librarian rock star, Nancy Pearl, was part of my five-year run writing bookish pieces for Alaska Airlines Beyond Magazine (RIP). Pearl’s philosophy on genre has stuck with me and you might hear me bring it up at a party sometime.