Eric Winick has a dilemma. He wants to help people tell their stories orally through his company, Yarn Audioworks. But he’s having difficulty persuading folks to come forward to record their narratives. “I’m just looking for the best incident-based 10-15 minute stories I can find,” he says. Winick, a full-time … Continue reading
Author Archives: KatHansen
Last Newspaper to Publish April 2043: Story-Based Ideas to Save Newspapering
The Huffington Post Complete Guide to Blogging has extrapolated information from University of North Carolina journalism-school professor Phil Meyer to determine that the very last newspaper will land on doorsteps in April 2043. I’ve said in a past entry that I’m OK with the inevitable death of newspapers as long … Continue reading
Birth of a Community-Storytelling Project
In Web and social-media time, it feels like Jennifer Warwick and I have been friends for ages and ages. It’s really been only since 2004, but she’s one of my “oldest” virtual friends, meaning that I have all sorts of warm feelings and admiration for her even though we’ve never … Continue reading
Champion of the Sustained Storytelling Practice: Barbara Ganley
One of my new heroes is Barbara Ganley, who blogs at (The New) BG Blogging. I find her fascinating because of her work with story in higher education and in community storytelling. She recently left the former to focus on the latter: Barbara Ganley recently left higher education to set … Continue reading
Jobless Stories with a Twist: They are Career Counselors and Recruiters
As a followup to Friday’s entry about Unemployed Bob who is attempting to collect stories of the jobless through his eponymous blog, I came across the story of Greg Dillon, as told by CNN’s Jennifer Reingold on CNNMoney.com. What makes the story especially interesting is the fact that Dillon is … Continue reading
V-Day Preview: Six-Word Memoirs of Love and Heartbreak
Valentine’s Day is a week from today, and the folks at SMITH magazine are serving up another tasty box of chocolates, a.k.a., their third book of six-word memoirs, Six Word Memoirs on Love and Heartbreak.
Commiserating Over Joblessness Through Stories as Half a Million Jobs Are Lost
A troubling convergence today: The US government announced this morning that 598,000 more jobs were lost in January; for the first time in this crisis, I learned of a friend who was just laid off (not counting a number of my former students who have not found appropriate work since … Continue reading
Friday Wordle
Here’s this week’s word cloud/tag cloud from Wordle.net based on the content of A Storied Career:
America’s Story
Perhaps it is President Obama’s inauguration, Black History Month, and the fact that February brings us Presidents’ Day that puts me in a patriotic mood and receptive to Americana. I was thus charmed by a site, America’s Story, from the Library of Congress. The site was designed especially with young … Continue reading
From Poverty Porn to Humanitarian Storytelling
Last fall, my Facebook friend Liz Massey of the blog Write Livelihood interviewed Roger Burks, a pioneer of what he calls “humanitarian storytelling.” The interview, Roger Burks, his company Pictographers, and Burks’ pioneering work in humanitarian storytelling all impressed me. I had especially not consider the negative and exploitative effect … Continue reading