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 ‘Kindness is having the ability to speak with love, 

listen with patience, and act with compassion.”

-Random Acts of Kindness Foundation

Join the Healing Story Alliance for a special gathering to share and explore stories of kindness in its many faces and forms. Through folk tales and personal stories, we will dive deeply into multiple experiences of kindness. What is it? How does it impact us and our relationships to ourselves, to each other, to the world? Come and listen to “kind stories” shared by both professional tellers and community members and see what memories of kindness emerge for you.

Date: Jan 8, 2023

Time: 7:00pm-8:30pm EST

(Open Mic Story Share and Reflection: last half hour)

Format: The story session opens with a concert of seasoned tellers and community tellers sharing stories with themes of kindness. During the second half of the gathering, audience members are invited to share a story, moment, or reflection about kindness that emerged for them as listeners.

Purpose: We all need a little more kindness in our lives. Perhaps a story can take us there.

“WHEN YOU ARE KIND TO OTHERS, IT NOT ONLY CHANGES YOU, IT CHANGES THE WORLD.”                                                                                                   Harold Kushner

KIND STORIES in CONCERT

ABOUT the STORYTELLERS

As a storyteller, Elizabeth Ellis doesn't mince words. Filled with hilarious and poignant honesty, her stories deliver down-home wisdom, southern style. Hers is a voice that finds the heart and the funny bone, riveting audiences of every age wherever she goes. Designated an American Masterpiece Touring Artist by the National Endowment for the Arts, Elizabeth is also a recipient of both the Lifetime Achievement Award and the Circle of Excellence Award from the National Storytelling Network. She is a frequent favorite at the National Storytelling Festival and the Teller-In-Residence Program of the International Storytelling Center.

Ben Cunningham is a multifaceted Artist and Storyteller whose recent story aired on the Growing Up Black episode of Stories from The Stage. This powerful episode is the 2021 winner of the 25th Annual Webby Awards in Virtual & Remote: Arts & Culture. The tone of Ben’s work is ever-expanding: ranging from humorous to heartfelt stories about bullying, childhood nostalgia, coming-of-age, and loss. It clashes between Subculture & Pop culture, while interweaving topics of race, gender, and other social issues.

Growing up in the barrio of East LA, where family rituals and Mexican traditions were the center of her emotional life, Olga Loya has mastered the expressive vocabulary of artful storytelling. With her poetic eloquence Olga's stories are an impassioned quest to keep alive not only the fabric of her family but the larger Latino culture, richly robed in folktales, ancient myths, and history. Olga envisions a world of passionate kindness, supported by my mission of using stories to help people overcome emotional and cultural borders. It is her fervent belief that stories reveal the commonality and individuality in our lives, that diversity offers opportunities to embrace the richness of cultures, that there is wisdom to be found in stories shared with fierce honesty, and, most telling of all, that laughter softens hearts.

Emcee

Jo Radner has been studying, teaching, telling, and collecting stories most of her life, and has performed from Maine to Hawaii to Finland.  After 31 years’ teaching at American University, Jo moved back to her home region of western Maine as a freelance storyteller and oral historian. Her new book will be out next spring: Wit and Wisdom: The Forgotten Literary Life of New England Villages. She is past president of the American Folklore Society and the National Storytelling Network.

Community Tellers

Also featured will be Community Tellers who will share anecdotes of kindness from their lives and work.

Dr. Courtney Horvath is mom to 11-year-old cancer survivor, Colby. Colby bravely battled lymphoma for 800 days after his diagnosis in March of 2020.  Colby’s journey inspired Courtney, a toxicologist and drug development professional, to become a passionate advocate for childhood cancer patients. Courtney and Colby recently gave a TEDx talk called “Surviving the Cure” and have started multiple philanthropic efforts to raise awareness of the desperate need for more targeted, accessible, safe, and effective therapies for childhood cancer patients.

For more information, contact:

Lani Peterson: Lani@LaniPeterson.com or Heather Forest Heather@storyarts.org