Raffle on Saturday, June 28 at the dinner break.
Tickets on sale throughout the Festival
Blog
2025 Storytelling Workshop
~ Friday June 27th 1-4 pm in the Schoolhouse~
OUT OF THIN AIR with Willy Claflin
How to write and tell original stories
Here’s an entertaining and practical workshop on how to dream up your own original tales. Using a couple of fool-proof formulas, Willy will show you easy ways to pull stories out of thin air. You are guaranteed to come away with at least one new story to tell—a story that no one else has ever heard before. It’s as easy as…pulling a rabbit out of a hat!
Special guest lecture by Maynard Moose
Tickets for the Workshop are sold separately HERE.
Local Teller- New Time!
This years Local Teller Showcase will be on Friday, June 27th from 5:15-5:45
Rowen White
Rowen White is a Seed Keeper/farmer and author from the Mohawk community of Akwesasne and a passionate activist for indigenous seed and food sovereignty. She is the Educational Director and lead mentor of Sierra Seeds, an innovative Indigenous seed bank and land-based educational organization located in Nevada City CA. Rowen is the Founder of the Indigenous Seedkeepers Network, which is committed to restoring the Indigenous Seed Commons, and currently serves as a Cooperative Seed Hub Coordinator. She facilitates creative hands-on workshops and strategic conversations in community around seed/food security around the country within tribal and small farming communities. As a farmer, mentor, leader, writer, and storyteller Rowen is deeply committed to a lifelong practice of embodied prayer that contributes to cultivating a culture of belonging in our ways of nourishing ourselves. She is part of a collective movement to reseed imaginations of a more beautiful and nourishing future through uplifting and mentoring emerging changemakers, visionaries, community members, and creative humans who are making nourishing contributions at the intersections of the landscape of food sovereignty and cultural revitalization. She believes that by cultivating creative supportive learning spaces, reclaiming narratives, and practicing radical imagination, we can work together to seed the change for a more equitable and beautiful relational, kincentric food system that centers around a deep sense of belonging and connection.
Open Telling
Open Telling~ NEW TIME!
Sign up to tell your own story in the Schoolhouse:
Saturday morning, June 28th~ 9:30-10:30 am.
Story Slam ~ 2025
The 2025 Story Slam theme is Jump in With Both Feet!
From your personal life to the global situation- tell us a story of a big turn around and how it effected change… or not!
Got a story?… Take it to new levels at this years’ Festival!
Story slam is held in the Schoolhouse on Saturday- June 28th from 5:30-6:30 pm.
You as a slammer will enter the competition by dropping your name in a hat. Twelve names will be drawn.
You’ll have five minutes to tell the tale. Time your tale well. Points are lost if you pass the five minutes.
There will be a small team of judges, some professional storytellers, some not, made up of audience members.
Judges will make decisions based on these criteria: how well the story is told; how well the story is structured; how well the story explores, connects with, and/or reveals some truth about the theme; and how well the time limit is honored.
True stories are the medium here; poetry is discouraged unless it fits the criteria and tells a story. Folktales, myths or fables are discouraged unless, again, they are worked into the teller’s true story and fit the criteria. Copyright laws apply: Don’t use someone else’s work. Audience and judges expect real life adventures.
Props—including notes—are not to be used.
The winner is the lucky recipient of an All-Festival Pass to next year’s Sierra Storytelling Festival.
Story Slam
The 2023 Story Slam theme is HOT WATER!
Hot Water
Have you ever been in need of hot water? Or run out of it?
Have you ever been in hot water?
Or maybe you’ve been in a divine hot spring, AHHHHHH.
Got a story?… Take it to new levels at this years’ Festival!
Story slam is held in the Schoolhouse on Saturday- July 8th from 5:30-6:30 pm.
You as a slammer will enter the competition by dropping your name in a hat. Twelve names will be drawn.
You’ll have five minutes to tell the tale. Time your tale well. Points are lost if you pass the five minutes.
There will be a small team of judges, some professional storytellers, some not, made up of audience members.
Judges will make decisions based on these criteria: how well the story is told; how well the story is structured; how well the story explores, connects with, and/or reveals some truth about the theme; and how well the time limit is honored.
True stories are the medium here; poetry is discouraged unless it fits the criteria and tells a story. Folktales, myths or fables are discouraged unless, again, they are worked into the teller’s true story and fit the criteria. Copyright laws apply: Don’t use someone else’s work. Audience and judges expect real life adventures.
Props—including notes—are not to be used.
The winner is the lucky recipient of an All-Festival Pass to next year’s Sierra Storytelling Festival.
2023 Storytelling Workshop
Creative Spirit Workshop With Eldrena Douma
~ Friday July 7 th 1-4 pm in the Schoolhouse
In her workshop participants will construct a story that has never been told, written or read. Simple techniques and inexpensive tools/props will be provided. Using ones imagination for quick creative thinking will help develop a written story.
The goal of this training is to challenge the participants to think quickly and creatively in writing a basic story.
Eldrena Douma a former classroom teacher turned Professional Storyteller since 1991, is an educator that travels throughout the United States sharing stories, teaching and encouraging the use of imagination, creative thinking and writing.
2023 Festival
Open Telling
Back by popular demand!
Sign up to tell your own story in the Schoolhouse at the new time: Friday, July 7~ 5;30-6:0 pm.
Local Teller
Caleb Dardick
will tell local lore on Saturday morning- 9:30-10:00 am
Saturday, July 9th, 2022
Story Slam
The Story Slam
will be back on
Saturday, July 9 at 5:30 pm in the Schoolhouse.
This years theme is: COURAGE!
5 min. per story
The Sierra Storytelling Festival will hold the hugely popular Story Slam once more this year. It’s your chance to regale the crowd and compete in the art of storytelling for a prize, by telling your own true story that’s in accord with our Slam Theme. It’s a contest of words by talent both known and undiscovered, and anyone over age 18 can tell.
You as a slammer will enter the competition by dropping your name in a hat. Twelve names will be drawn.
You’ll have five minutes to tell the tale. Time your tale well. Points are lost if you pass the five minutes.
There will be a small team of judges, some professional storytellers, some not, made up of audience members.
Judges will make decisions based on these criteria: how well the story is told; how well the story is structured; how well the story explores, connects with, and/or reveals some truth about the theme; and how well the time limit is honored.
True stories are the medium here; poetry is discouraged unless it fits the criteria and tells a story. Folktales, myths or fables are discouraged unless, again, they are worked into the teller’s true story and fit the criteria. Copyright laws apply: Don’t use someone else’s work. Audience and judges expect real life adventures.
Props—including notes—are not to be used.
The winner is the lucky recipient of an All-Festival Pass to next year’s Sierra Storytelling Festival.
