Recently, storyteller Eric James Wolf turned the tables on me. I’ve conducted more than 57 Q&As with story practitioners — and now Eric has done a Q&A with me. I thought it would be worthwhile to excerpt some of it here because it explains some of my philosophies and approaches with this blog.
In this entry, Eric asked me about the characteristics I look for in a Q&A interviewee:
When I first began sending out invitations for the Q&A series in the summer of 2008, I focused on applied-storytelling practitioners that I knew, or knew of, and admired. I was familiar with them through their books (for example, those of Terrence Gargiuolo
and Annette Simmons), through their presentations at conferences (for example, Madelyn Blair, Michael Margolis, and Svend-Erik Engh), and through encountering them on the Web (for example, Shawn Callahan and Stephanie West Allen). Once I had invited all the best-known story luminaries — and most of them accepted the invitation and participated — I didn’t really have to search hard for new interviewees. I encountered them through my ongoing research for blog material. I’m excited that for the most recent series of Q&As, I’ve received nominations and self-nominations of people who want to participate or want to recommend a participant. I had always hoped that would happen, and I’m thrilled that is has.
In the interview series, I have tended not to focus on oral-performance storytellers, people involved in transmedia storytelling, storytellers in film and TV (such as screenwriters and people who teach screenwriting), people in comic-book storytelling, and folks into the storytelling of gaming. It’s not that I’m not interested in these areas. I just feel that other bloggers and writers — like Eric James Wolf — do a good job of covering those fields and their practitioners, so it’s better for me to have a narrower focus. So many forms and uses for storytelling exist, and I can do a better job if I don’t try to cover all of them.