Ty Nolan
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Hi, hey, hello…! Can I tell you something? by Bryce Barraza
Hi, hey, hello…! Can I tell you something? I’ve recently been exploring how best to incorporate dialogue into my stories. Hearing myself use dialogue sometimes makes me feel like I’m listening to my voice on an answering machine. It just doesn’t sound right in my head. In effort to feel more confident with my incorporation…
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It’s Never Too Late by Guy McIntosh
I find myself in a place where moving forward in life is very important. For years now I have wondered what type of legacy I will leave behind for our future generations. Not so much monetary but historically as to our name and our life choices. In the last several years, I had some medical issues…
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The Mulla and Me by Diana Dinshaw
Idries Shah in his book The Sufis says, ‘Superficially, most of the Nasrudin stories may be used as jokes . . . But it is inherent in the Nasrudin story that it may be understood at any one of many depths. There is the joke, the moral- and the little extra which brings the consciousness of the…
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Leaning In to the Affirmative Coaching Process by Stephen Lazer
I came into this class suspicious of the affirmative coaching process. This is not to say I looked down upon it or thought negatively of it. It is, simply, far from how I usually think of providing or receiving feedback and wanted to see it in action. I can say that the affirmative coaching process…
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Let the Story Do the Work by Liz Warren
In the early days of the Storytelling Institute, I was practicing a story with my colleague, Ricardo Provencio. When the story was over, Pro said, “Well, you have at least three endings to that story. I suggest you pick the one that doesn’t tell people how to feel.” He made me laugh, but he was…
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A Different Viewpoint by Elizabeth Wunsch
“Do remember a time when you were lost?” That was a storytelling prompt that stood out for me. It triggered a memory. Of Brooklyn summer vacations at my Grandparent’s house. Of being three – four years old. Taking a trip to Coney Island. A big white beach umbrella with red roses that saved me from…
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I Found a Lake by Rebecca Love
When I was taking the STO297 class, Creating and Telling Personal Stories, I wrote a blog post about how I lost a lake. This is my follow-up, because the lake has been found! I wanted to tell a story about my paternal grandmother’s summer lake house in Connecticut. I very clearly remembered the body of…
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The Sacred is Personal by Rebecca Love
When I signed up for the Sacred Stories class, I didn’t really know what I was in for. Would we be examining sacred texts from the major world religions and telling stories featured in those texts? Like examining living mythology? I had a lot of trepidation about what might be expected. Religion can be such…
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Storytellers as Listeners by Nereyda Martinez
If you have experienced Storytelling yourself, you probably have heard the phrase, "The story chooses you." I had heard it many times and it did make sense to me. You're going to tell a story that calls to you, that interests you, that you connect with. This part I understood very well. It wasn't until…
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Good Trouble by Melanie Beikman
As we learn about tricksters I keep coming back to the memory of a talk I heard by theology professor Miguel De La Torre. Rather than tricksters as villains who appear in cautionary tales, Dr. De La Torre draws inspiration from the tricksters in Latino folklore. In the face of overwhelming poverty and injustice across the…
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Experiencing the Shahnameh by Dale McKinnon
On Thursday, April 6, 2023, I sat in a folding, auditorium-style chair to listen to Diana Dinshaw’s telling of the epic Persian story Shahnameh (“Book of Kings”). It is a habit of mine to take a couple of Advil before having to sit for more than ten minutes on an uncomfortable seat. At the end…
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The Me of Now by Donna Martin
I enrolled in the sacred storytelling course (STO288) as means to find my way back to storytelling. A traumatic car accident left me feeling adrift in a world that I could not recognize with a repertoire I could not remember – connections were scrambled or just gone. I wanted to find my way back to…