I was pretty much past the hands-on mothering stage by the time I entered my PhD program in 2003 as my kids were almost grown and one was already out of the house.
But I remain interested in the stories of PhD holders and students, especially those who share the joys and burdens of motherhood, so I was pleased to see the launch of a new blog within Inside Higher Ed, Mama PhD in which seven women blog about balancing motherhood with academic careers.
I learned yesterday that my book, Tell Me About Yourself: Storytelling That Propels Careers, will be published by JIST Publishing. 
The book was the non-scholarly companion to my doctoral dissertation, so I am thrilled to have it accepted for publication. A common goal of academics is to have their dissertation research published. I’ve had marginal success in publishing the scholarly portion, so it’s very satisfying to publish the non-scholarly.
I’m also gratified because the entire impetus for starting A Storied Career was my interest in the value of storytelling as the way to advance one’s career (in A Storied Career, I’ve obviously branched out to many other kinds of applied storytelling). Although other authors and even scholars have written small pieces about this connection, I’m the only one I know about who has made it a centerpiece of research.
A sister site of A Storied Career, Quintessential Careers, has published Tell Me About Yourself as a quasi-ebook under its Quintessential Careers Press imprint, and I have also been serializing the book in A Storied Career’s blog-within-in-a-blog, also titled Tell Me About Yourself. (I’m up to Chapter 7 out of 10 in the serialization). Both these versions are free. Since I don’t know whether JIST will feel kindly to having free versions out there in cyberspace, interested readers may want to take that opportunity now.
This week’s Wordle.net word/tag cloud based on A Storied Career.
Not surprisingly, I really enjoy “The Story,” from American Public Radio, hosted by Dick Gordon and produced at the University of North Carolina.
“The Story,”‘s Web site “About” section explains that the show is about telling the stories of what one listener called “the ordinary us:”
“The Story,” with Dick Gordon has taken us around the country and around the world, discussing political issues, family issues, health, science, the arts and the environment — what’s in the news as well as what’s in the air. From the beginning it has sought out first-person experiences from real people, not experts, to help us understand what’s happening in the world. Responses from listeners in every market where “The Story,” airs tells us that the program is making its mark. And the regular feature, Ahmed’s Diary, has won three major international awards.
“The Story,” in its current form has been produced since 2006, having started out with Dick Gordon hosting The Connection out of WBUR in Boston. More history:
… But when the station canceled production of the show in 2005, many listeners were upset … Many of them called or sent e-mail messages to the Chapel Hill station urging WUNC to bring Dick Gordon to North Carolina and to continue the program from here. … With financial support and encouragement from its supporters, WUNC invited Dick down to North Carolina to discuss the possibility of doing a new national radio program from Chapel Hill. Shortly afterwards, American Public Media — the national program distribution arm of Minnesota Public Radio, joined in the conversations….
The program now airs on 60 stations.
The program’s Web site tells what stories are in progress and asks for people to get in touch if they have a story to share. Another part of the site offers a way to share stories in general and suggests some prompts.
I’m really excited about a project I have going on this summer. I’m conducting (via e-mail) five-question interviews with some of the best-known folks in both applied and performance storytelling.
Seventeen practitioners have already responded to the Q&A: Molly Catron, Terrence Gargiulo, Jon Hansen, Loren Niemi, Gabrielle Dolan, John Caddell, Shawn Callahan, David Vanadia, Svend-Erk Engh, Sharon Lippincott, Tom Clifford, Ardath Albee, Sharon Benjamin, Carol Mon, Ron Donaldson, Jessica Lipnack, and Stephanie West Allen.
Among others who’ve agreed to participate are Annette Simmons, Christina Baldwin, Tim Sheppard, Michael Margolis, Victoria Ward, Steve Lovelace, Sally Strackbein, Thom Haller, Karen Dietz, Tim Enerata, Eric Wolf, Erin Fogarty, Rick Stone, David Drake, Nicky Fried, Cynthia Kurtz, and Kathleen Golden.
I sent invitations to these folks and others, but if you are reading this, did not receive an invitation, and would like to participate, please read the extended entry for details, as well as the set of “general questions” that participants have been asked to choose from. (Each interviewee also gets two questions composed for his or her special area of expertise.) Please e-mail me if you’d like to participate or drop me a note in the Comments.
The Invitation
I am initiating a series of short, 5-question interviews to appear on A Storied Career.
This planned series is modeled on a long-running and successful Q & A series with career experts.
Experts respond to the questions via e-mail.
A Storied Career does not yet generate a huge amount of traffic, but it does offer a Google Page Rank of 7.
I would love to have you participate, and if you agree, you’ll choose 5 questions from 2 sets of questions — 10 general story/storytelling questions (these appear below), from which you can choose 3 to respond to, and 2 questions chosen specifically for you and your particular area of story expertise/practice (e-mail me for these 2, and I’ll send the questions once you confirm your interest).
I’d also appreciate your suggestions for other experts who might like
to participate.
Thank you so much for considering this possibility,
What participants receive if they accept the invitation:
Below you will find general questions. Please choose and respond to THREE questions from the list of 10 general questions.
E-mail me for questions specific to you, and then please respond to BOTH of the questions chosen especially for you.
If you prefer, you can CHOOSE ANY COMBINATION OF 5 QUESTIONS from the general questions and the questions chosen especially for you.
There is NO set deadline for this Q&A; however, some people work better with the pressure of a deadline. If that’s you, let’s set Aug. 15 as the deadline as I would like to launch this feature in September 2008 and will likely run a Q&A weekly.
I would also like to run a short bio-blurb highlighting your current project(s) (books, Web sites, etc.), and/or if you prefer, this promotional material could appear in the form of an advertisement. Please also send a photo of yourself, preferably in .jpg or .gif format.
The Q & A will remain archived on A Storied Career, both in the regular entry archives and in the Story Practitioners section, where visitors can continue to view your expertise.
Thank you again very much for your participation.
Ten General Questions:
1. How did you initially become involved with story/storytelling/narrative? What attracted you to this field? What do you love about it?
2. The storytelling movement seems to be growing explosively. Why now? What is it about this moment in human history and culture that makes storytelling so resonant with so many people right now?
3. What people or entities (such as Web sites, blogs, books, organizations, conferences, etc.) have been most influential to you in your story work and why?
4. How important is it to you and your work to function within the framework of a particular definition of “story?” (i.e., What is a story?) What definition do you espouse?
5. The culture is abuzz about Web 2.0 and social media. To what extent do you participate in social media (such as through LinkedIn, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Second Life, blogs, etc.)? To what extent and in what ways do you feel these
venues are storytelling media?
6. If you could identify a person (such as a celebrity) or organization who desperately needs to tell a better story, who or what would it be?
7. Are there any current uses of storytelling that repel you or that you feel are inappropriate?
8. What future trends or directions to do foresee for story/storytelling/narrative? What’s next for the discipline? AND/OR What future aspirations do you personally have for your
own story work? What would you like to do in the story world that you haven’t yet done?
9. What’s your favorite story about a transformation that came about through a story or storytelling act?
10. If you could share just 1 piece of advice or wisdom about story/storytelling/narrative with readers, what would it be?
E-mail me for questions composed especially for you and your specific work.
When my cousin/best friend and I were kids, we went through a phase in which we were utterly titillated by women’s True Confessions magazines. Truly, these magazines fed my early lust for stories just as surely as did the anecdotes in Reader’s Digest. The classic story, which we still remember fondly today, was “I Said Yes to Six Boys.” I don’t know if these magazines still exist; I don’t think I’ve seen one in years. Their content seems quite tame by today’s standards, and I’m sure there are far more outlets for this kind of material on everything from social media to reality TV.
I was reminded of these scandalous magazines by a site in beta testing, Alpha Women. The site has many story-related components, including blogs and videos, but my favorite section is the one that reads like a micro-blog version of those true confessions stories of old, the Confessions section, full of short confessionals like:
My boyfriend was a virgin and 9 years younger than me when we first met. And he loves me!
All our friends and family think we’ve given up pot, but we’re just better at hiding it. If we’re not working, we’re smoking.
I want sex all the time..
Sex was great when we dated … now married there is none … I’m having a thing with married man the sex is GREAT!! now what?
I wish my husband would have an affair so I would have a valid excuse to divorce him.
I continue to be amazed when I discover new story-related sites, resources, and blogs. After three years at this blog (though sporadically before this year), you might think I’d be aware of everything that’s out there. Just this week, I discovered Narrative Magazine.
The publication’s mission statement says:
Not since the Gutenberg Bible has there been a publishing revolution to match that of the Internet. Yet, even as the Internet enlarges our view, it diminishes our literary horizons. The people who write great stories have fewer places to publish and fewer people to read their work. In the United States alone, there has been a loss of twenty million readers between the ages of eighteen and forty.
That’s why Narrative Magazine was founded in 2003 with the single mission to bring great literature into the digital age, and to provide it for free. Stories, poetry, essays, novel excerpts, articles, and interviews are available — without subscription — to readers everywhere. With an audience of 30,000 readers, Narrative Magazine has brought together online readers with the best literary minds in the world to reverse the downward trend in reading.
Narrative Magazine offers free subscriptions but seeks donations.
The publication sponsors a Narrative First-Person Contest with a $3,000 first prize and a July 31 deadline. The contest is:
open to all writers. We’re looking for works of fiction or nonfiction written in the first-person point of view in the following categories: short stories, short short stories, novel excerpts, essays, memoirs, and excerpts from book-length nonfiction. Entries must be previously unpublished, no longer than 8,000 words, and must not have been previously chosen as a winner, finalist, or honorable mention in another contest.
My other find in the last week was the Story Circle Network 
which is described in its mission statement this way:
The Story Circle Network is dedicated to helping women share the stories of their lives and to raising public awareness of the importance of women’s personal histories. We carry out our mission through publications, a web site, classes, workshops, writing and reading circles, and woman-focused programs. Our activities empower women to tell their stories, discover their identities through their stories, and choose to be the authors of their own lives.
The Story Circle Network is made up of women who want to explore their lives and their souls through life-writing — writing that focuses on our personal experience, through memoirs and autobiographies, in diaries and journals, in personal essays, in poetry. The Network is for every woman who aims to claim the power of her experience, who wants to map her journey, and who is determined to name herself. The Network is for you.
The site offers writing contests, the opportunity to take and teach courses, a podcast, stories of how members found Story Circle Network, and much more.
The Thank God It’s Monday newsletter from HumaNext/Communication Ideas suggests an exercise in which you ask yourself: What is the job you’d do for free? Asking that question, the newsletter says, is the path to discovering one’s life’s work, calling — or “genius,” providing the inquirer with these benefits:
I suggest taking “the job you’d do for free” a step further and write a story about it. Write about what makes it so fulfilling that you’d do it for free.
HumanNext says discovering your genius is “a long process, or a journey, with many pleasures along the way, culminating in a thrilling moment of discovery in which your genius finally comes to focus.” The newsletter says it can’t be done with a single exercise. What follows is another suggested exercise. Again, I suggest adapting this one in story format as you’ll see below:
Exercise: Discovering Your Genius From Your Past Successes
This week’s Wordle.net colorful word/tag cloud based on A Storied Career.