I got interested in Brendan Nolan both because he teaches a course called “Write Your Way to Work,” which relates to my interest in using story in the job search, and because of his involvement in Toastmasters. I’m delighted to bring you this Q&A with him, which will run over the next five days.

Bio: Brendan Nolan is a sought after speaker, writer and storyteller who draws on more than 25 years experience of journalism and practical business knowledge to train and entertain business people who know their business well but who may not have the communication skills to say what they mean at all times. He shows people in the corporate world and in local communities, no less, how to tell their own story well.

He twice delivered his bespoke* two-part workshops on “Telling Your Story” as part of InnovationDublin 2010.

Brendan is a member of Storytellers of Ireland; communications officer of the Irish Writers Union and a board member of the Irish Writers Centre. While President of Lucan Toastmasters Brendan guided a team that achieved The President’s Distinguished Club Award, a club’s highest honour. He won numerous speech contests with his own original material and evaluation contests in his time with Toastmasters, most of them story-based.

Nolan produces and presents Telling Tales a popular community radio show each week where writers and storytellers are interviewed on-air by Brendan and where he tells a new story each time in his own inimitable style. More than 80 original stories have been broadcast, so far. Some 25 stories may be heard online at any time.

As a book writer Brendan is author of Phoenix Park a History and Guidebook, The Irish Companion, and Barking Mad: Tales of Liars, Lovers, Loonies and Layabouts.

As a news journalist he wrote more than a million words in five years, all published and read across national, local and niche publications.

See his storytelling website.

*”Bespoke” is a term used much more in England than in the US that essentially means “customized.”

Q&A with Brendan Nolan, Question 1:

Q: How did you initially become involved with story/storytelling/narrative? What attracted you to this field? What do you love about it?

A. A teller will easily find an audience in Ireland to listen to a well-told story. The unspoken condition being that the story be interesting and have a twist or reveal; else the listeners will wander away out of politeness to an incompetent.

My father, Jimmy, told stories in an informal way and as his son at his side, I heard them often. A teller follows the story, always. My father told as to the audience before him.

On the way home, I would point out that this was not quite what he had told before. He would say he had forgotten and ask me to tell him how it should have gone. Such was his skill that I only recently came to realise he was teaching me to tell as we travelled along.

I sometimes find myself telling stories from his mouth even now. All hail Da.

In my own adulthood I worked as a news journalist for many years and during those interminable waiting periods with other reporters between news stories would listen and tell with relish those stories that never made it to print. Many of them inevitably were tall stories with the journalist as hero. Indeed.