Storytelling Festivals

I’ve been helping with the Women’s Storytelling Festival (https://www.bettersaidthandone.com/womens-festival-2022/), organized by Better Said Than Done, for the last few years. I have hopes of attending others, like the International Storytelling Festival (https://store.storytellingcenter.net/). There are others this year being planned by VASA (https://virginiastorytellingalliance.org/) and others later this year, so be sure to check later in the year to get current info.

So what is a storytelling festival? From my experience, it is a collection of storytelling shows held over a few days. The shows range from 1 – 1.5 hrs long. Sometimes 8 to 10 storytellers are performing. Other times, there are 4 or less with longer stories performed. Depending on the festival, there are workshops and other special offerings dealing with the art and business of storytelling. Below are just a few that I have found. Some, like the Women’s Storytelling Festival, aren’t taking submissions right now but will later in the year. Checking out festivals now as an audience member will allow you to get a feel for what they are like before trying to pitch a story.

As a reminder, think of this as a starter list. I’m sure there are far more festivals than I can keep track of here. Some sites don’t have dates for 2023 up just yet, so be sure to check back throughout the year. I plan to do a separate list for storytelling conferences, so be on the lookout for that later.

Published by Nick Baskerville

After years of being an instructor in the military and the and the fire service, I realized I needed to improve my delivery. My students needed me to improve delivery. But how do I improve my delivery? Simple. I finally took a member of Toastmasters up on the invitation to come to a meeting. It wasn't long until I joined. Along the way of improving my skills at delivering a message, I came to understand that of all the ways to get a point across, telling stories is the best way to get it done. Around this time, another friend from Toastmasters told me about The Moth monthly story telling shows. What better way to test out my theories on storytelling. It's in my travels there to the shows that I found more and more shows, and classes, and events centered around storytelling. Despite how many people know about the storytelling world, not many people know about the storytelling world. So now, I'm out to tell the world about storytelling.

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