How did you get started as a professional storyteller?

[Dianne de Las Casas, Author, Award-Winning Storyteller]

My journey into professional storytelling began in 1996. I was volunteering at my local library doing Saturday story times. The children's librarian there told me "You have a natural-born talent, Dianne. You should do this professionally." It never occurred to me that storytelling could be a career. She planted the seed and it continued to grow. When I told my husband that I wanted to be a "professional storyteller," he was leery but supportive. Here I am twelve years later with three award-winning CDs, three books, four more books on the way, and an international touring career. I went from working in a downtown highrise at a job I detested to working "here there and everywhere" with a job I truly love. I believe my passion permeates my work. Now my job is my joy and my joy is my job.

[Patricia Kjolhede]

I am not just lucky... I am truly blessed. I teach in an early childhood center where we only have about 75 kids total and a principal in the building less than half of the time. We all get along very well in our little "family" and give our kids a great foundation for learning and social skills. Life just keeps getting better so no wonder there's...


Always a song to sing,

Tricia

[Csenge Zalka]

When I was about 12 years old, I decided I wanted to be a bard. I had this book called German and Celtic myths and sagas, and it was love at first sight (yes, while all the girls in my class were madly in love with Leonardo DiCaprio, I was madly in love with Oisin... no kidding). So I read all the Celtic stories I could get my hands on, and looked up the list of stories Irish bards had to learn... and started learning stories by heart. And telling them to my friends and other kids in summer camps.
And then, 8 years later, I discovered that storytellers still exist in real life. Fireworks, fireworks. I still remember that day, June 2006 I think. I was surfing on the Internet when I came across one of the storytelling sites (I think it was storyteller.net) and I was all "Wow!" I started reading and reading and following link after link, and by the end of the day I decided again that indeed I want to be a storyteller, and nothing else...
So I signed up for the Storytell mailing list, and suddenly people from all around the world were sending me emails, and they were all nice and amazing and they were all real storytellers! They started teaching me how to be a professional. I made a homepage, and fliers, and business cards, and pulled all my stories together, and sent out letters to people in museums and libraries and schools... and got hired. Now, 2 years later, I'm in the US, telling stories.
And I'm still like "Wow!"
Cheers! :)

[Buck P Creacy]

Slim's Barber Shop for me in Farmington New Mexico. I learned early that if I could keep the fellas laughing I could shine more shoes. I admit not every story was appropriate for a fourteen year boy to hear, or to laugh at or to repeat... but I learned to repeat, write and tell and I love storytelling for the connections you make with people.

Buck

[Tom Taylor]

"My" Barber Shop, Buck, was King's Barber Shop, about 12' just west of the railroad tracks that ran right through Livingston, Texas, where I spent much of my childhood summers with my grandparents. After cutting my hair, he'd give me a shoulder/neck/scalp massage with one of those (now) primitive, but amazingly effective massagers worn on one's hand, with the 3 or 4 little springs to help keep it there.

I'd always nod off, of course, during the massage. Sometimes the train rushing by would wake me right up. I think some early stories might've come while I was nodding off in the chair in Mr. King's Barber Shop....

Tom

[Harvey Heilbrun]

I had been singing in my teaching of 4th, 5th and 6th grade classes for years, when in 1980, the Middle School which I had worked in asked me to take the lead role in the musical play "Hans Christian Andersen" they were putting on with their 6-8th graders. This was adapted from the movie with Danny Kaye, where he played Hans Christian Andersen". I said yes. I had never acted in a play before and other than reading stories to my class, I never told any stories. In this play I had to do both. The play was great. I was so amazed at the rapt attention that I got while telling stories (from the audience and the kids acting) that I decided to do more work on storytelling. I went to the National Storytelling Festival (I think it was their 8th or 9th) and read as many books as I could find on becoming a storyteller. At that time there were not as many as their are now.

Then two things happened. First I decided to tell a story to my 4th/5th grade class from Richard Chase's Jack Tales. The story I chose was Jack and the Doctor's Girl. I read through it a few times and decided that it was too long to do in one sitting, so I worked hard at learning the first part, which had a natural break (he tricks the farmer three times to get his $1,000). I then told that first part to my class. The thing of it was, they wouldn't let me stop. They demanded that I finish the story. So I did. From that day on I was learning and telling stories about once a week. The amazing part about that, came after about 6 week s of telling. It was after my third Jack tale. In the story, Jack in his usual way comes up with a comment as he passes some object, "Well I don't know what I can do with that, but I'll take it anyway." Of course he uses it at the end of the story to get whatever he is supposed to get. After ending the story the students were to go back to their regular work and as they were doing that I overheard two students discussing the story, with comments like, "You can't tell me that Jack didn't know what he was going to do. Look at what he did in . . ."(at which point they cited examples from other stories I had told.) I knew at that point that storytelling was for me. What an incredibly powerful teaching tool.

The second event that happened was that my local public library, hired me to do a Halloween Storytelling session that same year. I got to tell stories for a 45 minute set, with all age children some of whom were in costume and quite wired, and survive. I knew I could make it.

I continued to tell stories in my school and some local libraries and camps throughout my teaching career. After retiring in 2006 with 33 years in teaching I decided I would pursue the storytelling path, got involved in a local storytelling organization, LISN (Long Island Storytelling Network), and pursue telling in libraries and schools on Long Island, which is where I'm at now. It's slow going, getting the gigs, but is quite rewarding and I look forward to my continued growth.

[David S. Sharp]

My sister recently brought a box of things from our parents house after it was sold. In the bottom of the box was stack of my elementary school report cards. In looking through them I had to laugh at myself. The grades were pretty good, but my citizen ship marks and comments said, "he talks to much", and "he doodles constantly"! That describes the path my life took. I went to college and collected too many degrees in visual art, worked as an illustrator and sculptor, and later I became a musician. I have always talked to the audience on stage. In presenting the music I would talk about the titles and where the music comes from or some tid bit about the piece. (I'm a frustrated Anthropologist.) Not realizing I had begun telling stories, until one day doing a library program 12 years ago now the librarian asked me to include stories with our music. So I set about writing something to tell from a Yiddish friends "Tailor story" I transformed it into an English Tailor story with music and sound effects done by us. I went away feeling (Wow!) that felt so good and right, and I've always admired other storytellers that tell the kind of stories about the cultures my wife and I play music from. Since I work as a musician mostly it was easy to work stories into the performances I get paid for and in some cases the storytelling is the primary thing getting hired with the music becoming the secondary focus. It was easier to cross over in this fashion and bring with me my experience from other things to help me find and get paid for work. My wife is very creative as well and we came up with an alternative name for our music duo with storytelling. That way the regional presenters and Arts councils could make a distincition between that and our six piece Celtic group.

Dave Sharp
Glastonbury duo