Click here to see the recorded Zoom video of the 2022 Joint Tellabration! ™.
Below is information about both storytelling groups involved in this joint Tellabration! ™ as well as bios for all of the tellers. There is a description of the history of Tellabration! ™ at the bottom of this page.
Sacramento Storytelling Guild - Northern California
Member of Storytelling Association of California (SAC)
The tellers and a Master of Ceremonies from the Sacramento Storytelling Guild are listed below. If you click on their name, you will get a short bio about each teller and the MC.
Ed Lewis will be the MC for the Sacramento Storytelling Guild tellers.
The tellers will be:
Laura Cook
JohnPetrik
Linda Kennedy
David Tarvin
Inland Valley Storytellers of Southern California
Affiliate Member of National Storytelling Network (NSN)
Member of Storytelling Association of California (SAC)
The Inland Valley Storytellers (IVS) was formed in 2003 in Claremont, California and has members that live in the east end of Los Angeles County and the west end of San Bernardino and Riverside Counties. We used to meet monthly in the Claremont Forum to share stories but because of the COVID-19 pandemic all meetings are online using Zoom until further notice. We welcome both storytellers and story listeners. Attendance is free and open to anyone. We used to produce 2 storytelling concerts per year, one at the Claremont Friends Meetinghouse in the spring and one at the Claremont Folk Music Center in November. Our first Tellabration! ™ concert was at the Claremont Forum in 2003. In 2020 we switched to Zoom Tellabration! ™ events, one being a joint Tellabration! ™ and the other with just IVS tellers. This year we are doing a live in person Tellabration! ™ with just IVS tellers as well as this joint Tellabration! ™ with the Sacramento Storytelling Guild. To learn more about IVS, click on the links at the bottom of this page.
The tellers and a Master of Ceremonies from Inland Valley Storytellers are listed below. If you click on their name, you will get a short bio about each teller and the MC.
Nick Smith is the MC for the Inland Valley Storytellers.
Adrien Lowery ..................................... Angela Lloyd
History of Tellabration! ™
Tellabration! ™ originator J. G. Pinkerton envisioned this international event as a means of building community support for storytelling. In 1988 the event was launched by the Connecticut Storytelling Center in six locations across the state. A great success, Tellabration! ™ extended to several other states the following year, and then, in 1990, expanded nationwide under the umbrella of the National Association for the Preservation and Perpetuation of Storytelling, or NAPPS, which later became the National Storytelling Association, and is now called the National Storytelling Network.
In 1995, for the first time, there was a Tellabration! ™ in Japan, brought there by Japanese storyteller Masako Sueyoshi, who had been a part of Tellabration! ™ when she lived in Connecticut for several years. By 1997, there were Tellabration! ™ events on every continent but Antarctica. In 1999, 333 sites, 400 producers, and 6700 production staffers spun stories to a combined audience of over 34,000.
J.G. "Paw-Paw" Pinkerton passed away on November 4, 2008, just 3 weeks before the 21st year of Tellabration! ™ celebrations, on his way home to Connecticut from a family wedding in Texas.
Storytelling was J.G.'s second career, to which he devoted himself passionately after his retirement from Texasgulf in 1988. He served on the Board of Directors of NAPPS (the National Association for the Preservation and Perpetuation of Storytelling, parent of NSN) for six years, and he also served on the Board of the International Storytelling Center. He has been a generous friend and mentor to hundreds of storytellers.
In this season we remember J.G. particularly as the creator of the tradition of TELLABRATION! ™ - the night of storytelling on the weekend before Thanksgiving. As many of us produce and perform in our hundreds of Tellabrations! ™ across the country and the world every year, let us thank J.G. Pinkerton, with whose vision it all began.