National Storytelling Festival

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The National Storytelling Festival is held the first full weekend of October in Jonesborough, Tennessee. The storytelling festival was started by a high school journalism teacher in 1973. It has grown over the years to become a major festival in the United States with over 10,000 in attendance.

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[edit] History

Over thirty years ago, a high school journalism teacher and a carload of students heard Grand Ole Opry regular Jerry Clower telling a story over the radio about coon hunting in Mississippi. The teacher, Jimmy Neil Smith, was inspired to start a storytelling festival in Northeast Tennessee. The first National Storytelling Festival was held on a warm weekend in October in 1973 in historic Jonesborough. Hay bales and wagons were used for stages. About sixty people, including both the audience and tellers, were in attendance.

[edit] The Festival

Located in the natural beauty of northeastern Tennessee between the Blue Ridge and Great Smoky mountains, Jonesborough has hosted the festival since its inception in 1973. Jonesborough is Tennessee's oldest town, having been founded before Tennessee was a state.

The festival builds on the Appalachian cultural tradition of storytelling. Large tents that seat hundreds of people each are pitched in parks around town and storytellers sit on stages or at the head of the tent to perform. There are usually five or six tents in close proximity so that festival goers can easily walk from tent to tent and from performance to performance. About 10,000 people, including school groups whose students attend as an educational experience, come to Jonesborough whose normal population is just 3,000.

Storytellers and attendees come from all over the world. Past storytellers include Carmen Agra Deedy, Syd Lieberman, and Kathryn Tucker Windham. The festival influenced the development of a successful storytelling graduate degree program at the nearby East Tennessee State University.

The festival, acclaimed as one of the Top 100 Events in North America, sparked a renaissance of storytelling across the country. To spearhead that revival, Smith and a few others founded the National Storytelling Association. The founding organization became the center of an ever-widening movement that continues to gain momentum. Storytelling organizations, festivals, and educational events have popped up all over the world. Teachers, healthcare workers, therapists, corporate executives, librarians, spiritual leaders, parents, and others regularly make storytelling a vibrant part of their everyday lives and work.

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