Author: C.M.Mounts
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StoryFest 2026 Recap
StoryFest is a Minnesota storytelling festival, organized by Story Arts of Minnesota. It is an annual state-wide spring festival that features local, regional, and national tellers who teach and perform the storytelling arts. This year, StoryFest 2026 took place on Saturday, April 4th, its 15th year, and the 4th year hosted by the Bloomington Center…
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41st Annual Texas Storytelling Festival
Do you remember where you were on Friday March 13, 2020? We were at the 35th Annual Texas Storytelling Festival in Denton, TX, my very first though Loren has been attending, performing, and teaching at the festival for many years. We arrived by plane in the morning, ate at our favorite local Denton taco shack,…
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Seeking an Audience
by Christine Mounts ~ September 3, 2023 While wandering the Minnesota State Fair conducting our annual folklore tour, Dr. Buzz’s State Fair Odyssey, we made a stop at the 12:30pm Arts A’Fair performance of the Black Storytellers Alliance. Being the last show, at lunchtime, and in the heat of the day, only two performers told…
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First Night
Not theater because there is no fourth wall separating us from the audience. Not a poetry open mic at the bar on Wednesday to draw in patrons. Not the storytelling slam model that The Moth Radio Hour is renowned for. Not a writing program, not a marketing buzzword, or a gathering of liars, unless you…
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The Flounder at the Festival
At this year’s festival personal and humorous stories dominated. That transition began in the mid-’80’s when Donald Davis went from telling his versions of Jack tales to telling the stories that have been his bread and butter – his childhood. Soon he was joined by Andy Offut Irwin, Bil Lepp, and in a nod to…
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The Flounder Watches Whales
by Loren Niemi – June 16, 2022 The Flounder/founder (Loren Niemi) of the American School of Storytelling just returned from the Storytellers of Canada National Conference where he taught a “Difficult Stories” Master Class with Elizabeth Ellis, a three-hour “Double Helix: Plot and Voice” workshop and was ¼ of the Saturday night concert. It was…
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Flounder on the Road
by Loren Niemi – May 12, 2022 We just finished twelve days on the road clocking in 3,567 miles to share four performances including three (High School, New Voices, Liar’s Contest) at the Stone Soup Storytelling Festival in Woodruff, SC and an on-line performance for the Northlands Storytelling Network’s 2022 Fringe Festival. In between and around those…
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Reimagining Traditional Stories
by Loren Niemi – March 27, 2022 What do you remember about your favorite fairy tale? The major characters? Three pigs, a wolf… The basic plot? They build houses, the wolf blows the first two down but can’t shake the third. What else? The setting? Where were the pig’s houses? The time of year? Springtime…
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How Erotic is that?
by Loren Niemi – September 8, 2021 When we posted the description for “The Erotic in Stories” some wag commented that it was “talking about pee-pee” which probably says a lot about his proclivities but nothing about what the workshop actually is. If anything, that comment points out the need for a considered understanding about…
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Forgetting the Middle for a Moment
Both beginnings and ending require careful crafting. It has been said that if you know where you begin and where you end the middle will fill itself in.