*** This session has ASL interpretation.
StoryFest 2023 wraps up with a concert of compelling personal and traditional stories, which may contain content inappropriate for young listeners.
Brotha Ase (Joshua Gillespie) is a 3rd generation griot/ storyteller from North Minneapolis, Minnesota. He uses his artistic abilities - Digital Art, Music, Dance, Djembe Drumming & Oral Experimentation - to captivate to inspire others to take up the practice for their home communities. He believes our stories are like seeds from the divine tree of life, helping to guide us and grow us into divine trees of our own.
A storytelling student from East Tennessee State University, Jordan Bennett has long fallen in love with stories of all kinds. From the fantastic fairy tales to personal stories that can shift your whole perspective, every tale holds magic for the audience and the teller. As a deaf, disabled, and disfigured person, she’s determined to make that magic accessible to everyone, all the while sharing her unique stories developed over a lifetime of being different.
Howard Lieberman is a writer, performance artist/storyteller and outspoken social activist whose art takes emotional risks that most storytellers avoid. Howard is a moderately nice Jewish boy whose personality was shaped by being emotionally abused as a child, orphaned at 14 and homeless at 17. Through a combination of blind dumb luck and perseverance Howard only wound up in jail once (for assaulting a police officer) and found his way to NYC where he eventually became an attorney, Irish ceili dance teacher and Director of the Irish Arts Center. Hating what NYC brought out in him, in Howard moved to MN from NYC in 1990 to experience living among Lutherans and bitterly cold winters. Despite the boredom and overall passive aggressive nature of Minnesotans, Howard is relatively happy in Minnesota and plans to stay there until he either dies or decides to move somewhere more interesting.
Loren Niemi is a professional storyteller with 45 years of creating, collecting, performing, teaching and writing about what it means to be human. He is the recipient of a National Storytelling Network’s Lifetime Achievement Award. Loren’s collection of non-traditional “ghost” stories, "What Haunt Us", won a 2020 Midwest Book Award for “Sci-Fi/ Horror / Fantasy / Paranormal” fiction. His most recent book, "A Breviary for the Lost", is a poetic memoir, is available now. With Elizabeth Ellis he co-authored the critically acclaimed "Inviting the Wolf In: Thinking About Difficult Stories" on the value and necessity of the stories that are hard to hear and harder to tell. He also authored "The New Book of Plots" on useful narrative forms in creating oral and written stories, and "Point of View and the Emotional Arc of Stories" (co-authored with Nancy Donoval).
Actor, writer and storyteller Amy Salloway is a big fan of the Venn Diagram spot where live performance, human connection and social change overlap. Her autobiographical solo plays -- “Does This Monologue Make Me Look Fat?,” "So Kiss Me Already, Herschel Gertz!,” and “Circumference” -- have toured to and won awards at theatre festivals, colleges and communities across the US and Canada since 2003, and she’s contributed personal stories to radio programs on MPR , CBC, and the national podcast “Risk!” Amy teaches memoir and creative writing through Minneapolis Community Ed, and is the Midwest instructor for The Story Studio, which offers public and corporate storytelling workshops, as well as one-on-one coaching and training. Prior to the pandemic, Amy hosted Story Club Minneapolis one Thursday a month at the Bryant-Lake Bowl, and is currently contemplating the options for a live, online or combination reboot. She's honored and excited to be part of StoryFest's evening concert.
Cia Sautter received her doctorate from the Graduate Theological Union, and is a scholar and performer. Besides teaching, she leads a Storydance Theatre performance company that offers a unique combination of story and dance, receiving funding from Metro Regional Arts Council, the Brin Foundation, and Rimon Jewish Arts council. Her publications include The Performance of Religion: Seeing the Sacred in the Theatre and The Miriam Tradition.
Casadie Smith is a graduate student at East Tennessee State University, pursuing her master’s in Communication & Storytelling Studies. She delights in the crafting and telling of stories ranging from folk and fairy tales to personal adventures, and everything in between. Casadie has a Bachelor of Arts in Music, specializing in vocal performance, and continues to use her voice to build bridges between people from all walks of life. Her passion for human connection and community infiltrates her storytelling style in every way, and she is pleased to be sharing this with you today.