Sometimes everything has to be inscribed across the heavens so you can find the one line already written inside you. ( excerpt from David Whyte’s poem The Journey) I’ve been writing a book for the last 21 years… yes, really. “It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that…
This is my friend Steffani Raff’s new book , The Ravenous Gown. It’s a beautifully written and thoughtful book about girls and beauty. I wish I had read this book when I was a girl. I wish my mother had read this book when she was a girl and…
I teach two sections of storytelling every semester at Ithaca College. Often students come to class thinking it will be a survey or historically based class on the function of stories in different cultural, religious and racial communities. Many have also confided that they hope it’s an easy “A”…
“If you don’t risk anything you risk even more” Erica Jong Last Sunday afternoon I taught a slam workshop, “Hit Me! personal stories with a punch” in Asheville, North Carolina. There were 23 brave people in the room, some experienced tellers and others complete novices. The theme of the slam…
The little girl in this video is telling a story in her second language, English. I am inspired, aren’t you? I love her use of language and imagination and her ability to hold a narrative thread throughout the story with poise and confidence. Everybody is talking about the Common Core-…
It was 1965, the year of the aluminum Christmas tree and the revolving colored lights. Everything was changing in my hometown, Clayton, NY. We got a stop sign at the corner of James and Riverside Drive. My brothers wore their hair long and my sisters pinned up their skirts on…
My father, Carl Carpenter, was seventeen years old and a junior in St. Mary’s Catholic High School in Clayton, New York when he enrolled in the National Guard to “make a buck on a Saturday morning.” Every weekend he and a bunch of guys from Clayton hitchhiked to Armory Square…
My sister Mary and I are playing cops and robbers in the dining room as usual. We play it every night. Mary is always the cop. I’m always the robber. I’m always caught. I’m always guilty. I’m always tortured. I’m the youngest of five. I know my role. She…
I teach two sections of storytelling every semester at Ithaca College. I love teaching this class. The students are bright and interested and so creative. I also admire my students for who they become over the course of the semester. They go from “I would rather throw myself…
It took my Aunt Marguerite several hours to realize my Uncle Eddard wasn’t dozing. He was dead. “Well, that man never did talk much,” she said in her own defense. I know you’re not suppose to laugh at funerals or at the bedsides of the dying but when my father’s…