Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Busy Summer
I realize that I haven’t taken time to blog this summer. It has been a busy time for me – researching and developing a storytelling program I have booked this winter, keeping up with storytelling workshops and festivals, photographing nature in my own flower garden, and “working out” at the fitness center.
I attended Dianne Hackworth’s Wild Week at the Wildacres Conference Center during the first week in July. This was a fun week of meeting new storytellers, networking with one another, learning, working on our storytelling skills and videotaping. Leaders, Dianne and David Joe Miller led a fantastic workshop.
These past couple of weeks I have been busy gathering articles and calendar items for the Journal of Tar Heel Tellers. JTHT is the North Carolina Storytelling Guild’s official newsletter that I have been editor of for eight years. Editing and laying out the journal continues to be a learning process. Each issue is a new challenge. And I never know how it will look until it’s actually published.
I recently ran into six of my old high school classmates. Since visiting with them, bits and pieces of stories are jogging my memory. I hope that once my mind and fingers begin to work together, I’ll have another new story to tell.
Labels:
busy summer,
Journal of Tar Heel Tellers,
North Carolina Storytelling Guild,
storytelling,
Wildacres
Sylvia Payne, a North Carolina Storyteller, comes from a diverse background of Scots Irish, English, and German ancestry. She grew up in the North Carolina foothills listening to family stories told by her mother. A graduate of High Point University and a former children’s librarian, her repertoire includes world folktales, stories of history, legends and family stories. With more than 30 years’ experience, her animated style, and her stories captivate and transport the listener into an imaginary world. In addition, she conducts workshops for parents, teachers, and college and university students.
She serves on the North Carolina Storytelling Guild Board and is editor of the Guild’s bi-annual publication, Journal of Tar Heel Tellers. Sylvia has studied with such storytelling masters as Donald Davis, David Holt, Tim Lowry, Connie Regan-Blake and Donna Marie Todd.