Storytelling Resources for Storytellers

Cariadoc's Miscellany Period Sources for Storytellers - A helpful and informative annotated list of mediaeval collections of tales, originally intended as a guide for tellers at Renaissance fairs etc. Includes links to online versions.

Contracts and Storytellers: If Only I'd Known - Brief article by Elizabeth Ellis, from the Tejas Teller, about how and why one should always use a contract for gigs.

CSUF -- Folklore Home Page - Includes the vast Traditional Ballad Index of Folk Songs, and the Central California Folklore Archives

Eric Miller's articles on storytelling - Academic articles on Face-to-Face Storytelling, and Tamil Nadu, South India, including videos of traditional storytelling.

Eric Miller's storytelling course syllabus - Long article and complete syllabus on The Storytelling Process - rather academic but useful.

Fairy Tales: Origins and Evolution

Finding Stories That Convey Your Values (by Doug Lipman) - Article from The Storytelling Coach, including tips on clarifying the value, scanning for memories and images, developing the stories, and experiments in value telling. Doug is a very well respected storytelling coach.

Handbook for Storytellers - Hosted by the Internet School Library Media Center, this answers many questions on storytelling, giving practical tips and advice.

Keeping a Story Box - An article by Judy Nichols, from the Tejas Teller, on cataloguing and keeping track of your storytelling repertoire.

Legends - A large, beautiful, quality site with texts, introductions, research material etc. on a wide variety of famous legends and tales, including King Arthur, Robin Hood, Pirates, Beowulf and more.

Oral History: Techniques and Procedures - This is an entire book by Stephen E. Everett, Center of Military History, United States Army. It gives general advice on improving interview techniques and presents guidelines for conducting, transcribing, and using oral histories. Although written to help historians collect material about wartime events, it is of course helpful to anyone in any other field.

Oral History_ Techniques and Procedures

SCA Storytelling Resources - A discussion of the importance of authenticity, interesting for tellers although aimed at those in historical re-enactment societies. Followed by period sources of tales - a very informatively annotated and extensive list of on-line tales, and links to related information.

Storytellers' Research Guide - This online version of the award-winning book by Judy Sierra includes in-depth discussion and advice on: Research Basics, Tracking Down Tales, and Around and About the Tale. These are the main bibliographic resources in the book, compiled in 1996, and not updated. Lots of book references.

Storytelling: The Art Form Of Painting Pictures With Your Tongue - A whole book online, by Michael Patterson. Discusses the role, uses and techniques of storytelling. Includes exercises, resources and a few tales. Well worth reading.

Tejas Teller Archives - A number of useful online articles from the Tejas Storytelling Association newsletter. Includes censorship, contracts, keeping track of your repertoire, African telling traditions,

The Real Origins of Halloween 3.7

The StoryDrum - An on-line storytelling magazine, new issues appearing occasionally.

Tiboli dreaming - Storyteller Laura Simms gives her travel diary of visiting a remote Filipino village. A thoughtful article for the Association for Traditional Studies, illustrated with photos.

Welcome to Story Dynamics!

Background Resources - For researching information about cultures stories came from

Asian Resources - A host of links to Asian studies tools, an atlas of maps etc. Lots of cultural information of all kinds

Cultural Education Curriculum Topic Index - Large and eclectic resources on ancient civilizations, fairytales, and many possibly useful narrow topics.

Mediaeval Love in the Western World - University links page to lots of resources about mediaeval life and literature (which was often full of folktales).

The Reference Desk at Carrie - Links to large numbers of dictionaries, including translation dictionaries, thesauri, and an index of resources for historians which covers a great many individual countries - useful for background information.

Bibliographies, Books and Recordings - of stories, or about storytelling

Aaron Shepard's Storytelling Bookshelf - A few of Aaron's favourites, including Storytelling Guides, Story Collections, and Storyteller Reference

American Folk Literature: an Annotated Bibliography - Compiled by Dianne Van Auken in 1997, this lists quite a few books and gives very extensive annotations.

Cal Poly story biblio. - A list of reference materials and curriculum guides, story telling methods, folktales and myths, lesson plans for storytelling, media materials, a list of journal articles and ERIC resources.

Caldecott Medal Winners - A list of the winners of this book award, 1938-2000.

Cariadoc's Miscellany Period Sources for Storytellers - A helpful and informative annotated list of mediaeval collections of tales, originally intended as a guide for tellers at Renaissance fairs etc. Includes links to online versions.

Carol Hurst's Children's Literature Site - Reviews and teaching ideas for kids' books. - Large and highly helpful site. Reviews of books and information on topics concerning educators and storytellers. Lists books conveniently by title, author, type and grade level, and includes subjects such as Quests, Mythology (Greek and Roman), Mysteries, Bullies, Fools and Tricksters.

Center for Studies in Oral Tradition - Oral Formulaic Theory and Research: An Introduction and Annotated Bibliography. Absolutely immense, mainly academic and technical, but of interest to storytellers wanting some theoretical background information on this particular subject. Plus a separate author index to the oral tradition in general, and some links

Children's and Young Adult Literature Research Guide - Although specific to St. Norbert College Library, this guide mentions and annotates a number of useful reference works.

Children's Literature - Best Books Lists - A long list of links pages from other sites, all listing recommended children's literature.

Doty Coyote's Resources - Storyteller Thomas Doty's very useful page of several biblios, including some extensive reviews and useful annotations, covering books not only on storytelling, but those useful to tellers wishing to get a wide grounding in skills, plus lists of films, an

English Language Arts 6-9 - Huge, well-organised site primarily for teachers of 6-9th grade children, with full references, annotations, summaries, and suggested uses.

Eric Miller's storytelling bibliography - Very extensive Storytelling (Oral Narrative) Bibliography

Faery Tales, Folk Lore, and Myth - Long list of links to books of fairy tales, grouped by country. The links are all to Amazon Books, and this site has pics of the covers but doesn't give any of its own description for them - but an interesting resource nonetheless.

Folklore Research Guide - Mugar Memorial Library - Useful annotated list of reference works. Specific to this library, but of course available elsewhere.

Folklore Studies Titles from Hisarlik Press - A variety of academic books, by the publishers for the Folklore Society.

H-Nilas Stories for the Seasons Bibliography - A good and wide ranging biblio covering folklore and customs, Earthday and ecological story books and more. Plus some weblinks.

Improv books - Theatersports.com, a site about improvisational theatre, have a good size list of books on improvisation, all with direct links to ordering at Amazon. Unfortunately no descriptions or annotations, unless Amazon have something.

Judy Sierra bibliography - Story and folktale books by Judy for children, and for teachers and librarians.

Mythology and Folklore research guide - University at Buffalo Libraries - Lockwood -

Nancy Schimmel's Folktale Index - Excellent resource. Almost a focused mini-Tale Type Index. Lists of folktales with Active Heroines, Adoption Themes, Ecology Stories, plus Bilingual Ecology Books and Environment Song Audio Tapes for Children. Each tale has a very brief summary and reference to the book which contains it.

Newbery Medal Winners - A list of the winners of this book award, 1922-2000

Oral History: Techniques and Procedures - This is an entire book by Stephen E. Everett, Center of Military History, United States Army. It gives general advice on improving interview techniques and presents guidelines for conducting, transcribing, and using oral histories. Although written to help historians collect material about wartime events, it is of course helpful to anyone in any other field.

Pacific Storytelling Catalog - Quite a number of storytelling tapes, books and videos available from this company. Also includes biographies and information about the tellers.

Research Guide: Children's Literature - WCSU Libraries' non-annotated list of reference works.

Story Arts - A Storytelling Bookshelf for Teachers - A basic collection of Essential Books About Storytelling in the Classroom, World Folktale Anthologies For Storytellers, plus links to Heather Forest's own books and storytelling tapes. Books About Collecting Family Stories

Storysell! - items for sale - A page especially for storytellers to sell or exchange their storytelling books etc.

Storytellers' Research Guide - This online version of the award-winning book by Judy Sierra includes in-depth discussion and advice on: Research Basics, Tracking Down Tales, and Around and About the Tale. These are the main bibliographic resources in the book, compiled in 1996, and not updated. Lots of book references.

Storytelling References & Bibliography - From the Internet School Library Media Center's Handbook on Storytelling. Quite a few interesting titles, but not annotated.

Telling Tales book lists - Telling Tales has a moderate number of in-print books listed, divided into How To books, and story books from each continent. Each has a photo of the cover, short annotation, and best of all, a link to buy it online from Amazon.

The Green Mythological Booklist - Kim Burkhardt's huge bibliography, posted regurlarly to alt.mythology, here presented on a convenient and organised website. The books are classified according to culture, but unfortunately aren't annotated and neither are the references fully detailed. Nevertheless, an essential resource.

Traditional Storytelling Today: An International Sourcebook - Excellent-looking reference book by Margaret Read Macdonald, but expensive

Digital and Corporate Storytelling - Multimedia and internet innovations, and business orientated storytelling

Changemakers.net

CORPORATE STORYTELLING by KEN FARMER - An actor offering hard-sell storytelling (drama) services and training for businesses

Digital Storytelling Tour - Institute of Texan Cultures - A nicely designed site taking you through the stories of Texan history, with audio and text.

eGroups thestorynet

Every Leader Tells a Story - Article in Fast Company business magazine about the power of stories in business

Fast Company

How the Best Storytellers Win - Mildly interesting. 5 rules to 'master the craft of storytelling' but which in fact are about how to be a good writer of stories, with some commercial leanings. From Fast Company, an online business magazine

Patricia Fripp Speaker on Change, Promoting Business, Speaking & Marketing

Pioneers of Change

StoryNet - Home Page

The Story of You (washingtonpost.com) - Long article, or relentless rant depending on your viewpoint, about why hypertext, randomness and multimedia pictures are the future of storytelling (more correctly, narrative and literature).

TheBrain.com

Homepages - Websites of storytellers, organisations and festivals, including related areas such as folklore.

Individuals
- Allan Davies - Thought-provoking and innovative site, with stories, essays and more.
- Beate - Norwegian storyteller. Part of her site is in English, with stories.
- Longshanks & Talesman - One storyteller and one archeologist provide site specific tours of performance archeology, full of fact and fiction.
- Mountain Musings - Stephen Holler - Brochure site, with a couple of stories to read.
- Offbeat Tales - A Right Earful - Welcome - Chris Bostock's storytelling and music group
- Once Upon a Toon - Jo Wos combines live cartooning and storytelling
- Sharon Kirk Clifton, Storyteller
- Tahira's Home Page - Otherwise known as Miriam Robinson Gould, an MA candidate in Foklore at the University of North Carolina. Involved in the Medieval and Renaissance Recreation society known as The Society for Creative Anachronism, her pages include useful and extensive links to mediaeval story sources, plus links to mediaeval and Renaissance dance resources.
- The Travelling Talesman - Cliff Eastabrook performs period tales in costume, and on location, especially mediaeval, Celtic and Viking. Also one half of Longshanks and Talesman
- Travis Edward Pike's Musical Mystery Morningstone
- Welcome to Story Dynamics!

Organisations
- ASLAN Danish storytelling organisation - Bilingual pages in English and Danish, with directories of Danish and Scandinavian tellers, Danish and international groups, Danish books, and links.
- Festival at the Edge - In Much Wenlock, Shropshire - Music and storytelling. An excellent festival with international storytellers, and storytelling classes beforehand.
- Heartland Story League - Storytelling group in Chicago's South Suburbs. Local info, and some workshop tips, plus a good links page.
- International Marie de France Society - For students or scholars interested in the twelfth century poetess, author of many lays. Links to all the lays are here, with online texts in English and French. Also links to aticles and essays.
- Jewish Storytelling Coalition - Based in Massachusetts and New England, founded in 1989
- Norsk Fortellerforum - Norwegian storytelling organization. Some resources are in English, some in Norwegian. Try the links ('Linker') page.
- Northlands Storytelling Network
- Prince Edward Island festival - The PEI festival is on an island off of Canada. The site also has a small proto-directory of local tellers.
- Tejas Storytelling Association - Large storytelling guild in Texas. Also has very interesting articles online, from past issues of its newsletter.
- The Folklore Society

DotyCoyote.com: Thomas Doty, Storyteller - Plenty of interest, including stories, extensive wide-ranging bibliographies and reviews, storytelling services etc., streaming audio of Doty (or is it Coyote?) telling tales, and a chat/message board .

Storytellers Inc of Indiana - An organisation that arranges concerts, workshops, a festival, publishes a newsletter and a directory of Indiana storytellers. This site has lots of resources - calendar, directory, and especially a wonderful, large collection of syllabus material for the

Wordweavers (Australia) - Very pretty site, includes publishing, photojournalling and storytelling services.

Impro - Improvisation resources to help storytellers develop skills, teach, or run workshops

Living Playbook - impro games

Monkey Games

Odyssey of the Mind - creative problem solving program for students

The Improv Page

The New Improv Page

various writings - Dan Goldstein

Links pages - dedicated to listing weblinks relevant to storytellers

CSUF -- Folklore links - A few links to some excellent folklore resources - indices of folk music, ballads etc.

Heartland Story League Links - A good annotated collection, both to storytelling sites and story texts.

Library of Congress - Resources in Ethnographic Studies - A smorgsbord of great links for folklore and related things, including: Directories, Scholarly Programs, Archives, Museums, and Archival Collections,| Grants and Awards, Journals and Newsletters,| Societies,| Educator's Resources,| Ethnomusicology and Folksong Resources,| Fieldwork, Indigenous People's Resources, Mythology and Narrative

Montage Myths & Storytelling - An Index - A good number of links, categorised into tellers, associations, etc.

Norsk Fortellerforum's storytelling resources - Norwegian storytelling organization's good list of links, many in English. some in Norwegian.

Society for Storytelling - Related Web Sites - Mostly UK storytellers' and groups' websites.

Story Resources - Sherri Johnson - One of the longest running and largest link lists, including storytelling, and stories - both oral and written.

Storytelling links - Cannylink bookstore - Cannylink resources page has just a few general links

Storytelling, Drama, Creative Dramatics & Reader's Theater - Good long list of links, including to some interesting related subjects

Wordweavers - Links - Beryl O'Gorman's Australian Wordweavers page. Life storytelling, and various sites, from homepages to resources.

Resources - Websites with useful resources for storytellers

Bryn Mawr Classical Review - Online reviews of scholarly work in classical studies - including literature. Large searchable archives.

CLASSICS-L archives - Searchable archives of a busy email list dedicated to Classical literature.

creativity quotes

Folklife Sourcebook: A Directory of Folklife Resources in the United States, a Publication of the American Folklife Center, Library of Congress - A directory of Federal Agencies, Folklife Programming in Public Agencies and Organizations, Archives, Higher Education Programs in Folklife and Folklore, Societies, Serial Publications, Publishers of Books and Monographs on Folklore, Ethnomusicology, and Folk Music, Mail Order Dealers of Books on Folklore, Ethnomusicology, and Folk Music in North America, Mail Order Dealers of Folk Music and Folklore Recordings, Directories, plus Introduction to Folklife Resources in Canada, Introduction to Folklife Resources in Mexico

Hypermail archives at OSU - Access to the searchable archives of various email discussion lists, all on ancient and classical literature.

Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Main Page

LT-ANTIQ archives - Antique Literature email list archives. Scholarly information on some old story sources.

Mythology: MYTHING LINKS' Home Page - A huge and eclectic range of information and links - to mythology, fairy tales, folklore, sacred arts and traditions -

Storysell! - items for sale - A page especially for storytellers to sell or exchange their storytelling books etc.

Teaching Storytelling - A large resource of syllabus material - lesson plans, explanations and methods, references and more, contributed by various well known American storytellers. Part of the Stories Inc. site from Indiana.

The Reference Desk at Carrie - Links to large numbers of dictionaries, including translation dictionaries, thesauri, and an index of resources for historians which covers a great many individual countries - useful for background information.

The Seven Sages of Rome - A detailed introduction to this ancient and very popular collection of tales, by the scholarly Seven Sages Society

The Short Encyclopedia of Hotcâk (Winnebago) Myth, Legend, and Folklore - An admirable and growing online encyclopaedia, including many whole stories as well as good articles on many animals, objects, characters, customs and other elements of stories in this North American Indian culture. Plus plenty of external links to sites

Vol. 1. From the Beginnings to the Cycles of Romance. The Cambridge History of English and American Literature: An Encyclopedia in Eighteen Volumes. 1907–21 - This huge work is all online, and this volume traces many works, authors and movements that are relevant to storytellers - the authors that wrote down collections of tales, the troubadours and others who told them and composed poetry, the romantic epics that were to be so influential on tales ever since. Some chapters of interest: The Gleemen, Traditional Plots; Fairy Tales; Relation of Romances to Ballads; Celtic Romances; The Mabinogion; The Holy Grail

§4. Oriental Fable: "Flores and Blancheflour, The Seven Sages of Rome". XIV. Metrical Romances, 1200–1500. Vol. 1. From the Beginnings to the Cycles of Romance. The Cambridge History of English and American Literature: An Encyclopedia in Eighteen Volumes.

Storytelling FAQ material - Sites of facts or prime resources to be put into The Storytelling FAQ on this site

12 Principles of Face to Face Storytelling - Eric Miller's analysis of some principles taught by Laura Simms.

American Folklife Center - Based at the Library of Congress, this centre maintains a vast US national archive of traditional life, broken down into various ethnographic field collections. These include folklore, recordings and many other relics. Their ethnographic resources page is useful for background research for stories.

Amis du Conte - French language email list for storytellers. Low volume but reasonably active. Hosted by eGroups, so one can join or read on the web.

ASLAN's directory of Danish Groups - In Danish

ASLAN's directory of Danish tellers - In Danish

Conrad Bladey's Irish Studies Pages - A great resource for storytellers and folklorists, including many traditional tales, folk customs around food, drink, music, song, Brigid, and much more.

Creative Minds Library - Myths, legends and folklore

Culture & Tradition: Journal of Folklore & Ethnology by Canadian Graduate Student s - Canada's longest running, bilingual folklore journal, published for twenty years in French and English. Contains contents lists of all published articles, but beware the slow-loading graphics-heavy pages.

Eldrbarry's EFFECTIVE STORYTELLING - A manual for beginners, full of useful, practical advice and encouragement. Recommended.

Fairy Dictionaries - Actually, a few links to online encycoplaedias of mythology and folklore.

Guerilla Marketing Online - Energetic site with large archives of detailed advice on marketing, much of it useful for the self-employed storyteller. Read, learn and get a hold on your business.

Handbook for Storytellers - A useful online collection of advice and FAQs, by Inez Ramsey, hosted by the Internet School Library Media Center. Includes origins of telling; choosing and learning stories; voice and gestures; tellilng; record keeping; bibliography etc.

Large Class Newsletter - Old newsletter with an article on using stories and examples to make lectures lively and vivid.

Maintaining Health on Tour - Cold & flu prevention for the touring performer. This is a compilation of advice from storytellers on the Storytell listserv, presented on Tim Jennings' pages.

More international storytelling orgs for the FAQ

National Storytelling Network (USA) -- StoryNet - One of the main storytelling organizations in the USA, with thousands of members. Publishes a directory of members, a magazine, and is connected to the USA National Storytelling Festival.

Papa Joe's Cyber Storyteller's Tool Box - A good concise list of prime resources for the storyteller.

Story Resources - Sherri Johnson - One of the first big guides on the net, though not kept regularly up to date. Has links to stories and literature too, and children's resources.

Story-Lovers Products - Greetings cards, notepads, business stationery and more, available with a choice of many classic story illustrations. Plus handy services for storytellers such as free listings, and images of your business card or brochure put online - or get inspiration for your own by looking.

Storysell! - items for sale - A page especially for storytellers to sell or exchange their storytelling books etc.

Storytell Discussion List - The number one storytelling resource, home to a genuine community of 500 storytellers very busily engaged in lively, intelligent and friendly discussion. This page gives basic subscription instructions, plus a link to more.

Storytellers Online - Collection of links, by Montage, to a reasonable number of tellers.

Storytelling Record Keeping - Brief recommendations for keeping track of your repertoire.

Storytelling Manual - Workshop Rotation Model - A thorough beginner's guide to learning to storytell. Although aimed at Sunday school teachers, it has plenty of relevance to all.

Storytelling: The Art Form Of Painting Pictures With Your Tongue - A whole book online, by Michael Patterson. Discusses the role, uses and techniques of storytelling. Includes exercises, resources and a few tales. Well worth reading.

SurLaLune Fairy Tales Site - A portal to the realm of fairy tale and folklore studies featuring annotated fairy tales. Lots of good stuff, including a good scholarly email list on fairy tales

Telling Tales' Directory of Storytellers - Small directory with photos, mainly UK tellers

The Art of Story Telling - Eldrbarry - A major site of excellent advice and resources.

www.erzaehlen.de - A platform of information and exchange between German storytellers and their audience. This page provides an overview, in English, of the emerging storytelling scene in Germany. German language pages (automatically translatable) are: general thoughts, quotes and opinions about storytelling, a list of German storytellers and institutions, a German storytellers' blackboard: queries, offers, announcments, European festival and workshop calendar (well needed!)

Yahoo! Groups : Search Results for storytelling - Check for email lists about storytelling. Note that out of hundreds of groups, most will be about creative writing or role-playing, and most will have only a handful of members and few posts. But browse through the summaries or archives and see what you find.

Training - in storytelling, presentation, voice...

Aids, games, tools and exercises for COMMUNICATING EXPERIENCE.

BBC Online - BBC Talent - TV Presenter - Trade Secrets

Presenter Training - Radio presenter training for UK student radio

UK Acts & Entertainments Agency - No storytellers on the books - yet.

Storytelling Resources for Storytellers

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A Storytelling Miscellany - General links

Articles - Long or in-depth writing about storytelling

Background Resources - For researching information about cultures stories came from

Bibliographies, Books and Recordings - of stories, or about storytelling

Digital and Corporate Storytelling - Multimedia and internet innovations, and business orientated storytelling

Homepages - Websites of storytellers, organisations and festivals, including related areas such as folklore.

Individuals

Organisations

Impro - Improvisation resources to help storytellers develop skills, teach, or run workshops

Links pages - dedicated to listing weblinks relevant to storytellers

Resources - Websites with useful resources for storytellers

Storytelling FAQ material - Sites of facts or prime resources to be put into The Storytelling FAQ on this site

Training - in storytelling, presentation, voice...