The Tennessee mountain town has become an international center for people and cultures telling what needs to be told.
Jay Huron
The “side-splitting nature” of Bil Lepp causes listener reactions like on these faces as they they laugh at one of his ridiculous and hilarious stories.
Maybe one way to think about the upcoming 50th annual National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, Tennessee, is through the words of International Storytelling Center President Kiran Singh Sirah, in a blog this spring:
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Bil Lepp, a five-time champion of the West Virginia Liars Contest, has been called “a cross between Dr. Seuss and film noir.” Among his gifts is to make listeners believe his lies hook, line and sinker.
Our organizational history is inextricable from this particular community, where residents watched a dying Main Street transform into the “Storytelling Capital of the World,” one October weekend at a time.
Or maybe think about it via this famous quote from the Los Angeles Times: “For what New Orleans is to jazz . . . Jonesborough is to storytelling.”
Whatever the perspective, the reality is substantial and sustaining. That first gathering of 60 people led by founder Jimmy Neil Smith through the years of perhaps the festival’s most famous storyteller—Ray Hicks—Jonesborough has come to now host a three-day festival that draws more than 10,000 people. Sirah is evangelical about the resulting magic: stories from all over the world.
“We know that stories from different people, different times and different places contain important information about the past,” writes Sirah, who took over from Smith in 2013. “But they are also in dialogue with the present, helping us make our way through the world with empathy and curiosity and kindness.”
The ‘22 event is October 6-9. storytellingcenter.net/festival/main
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Linda Gorham is on the Wall of Storytelling Faces and Voices at the International Storytelling Center. She was awarded the Distinguished National Service Award by the National Storytelling Network and the Linda Jenkins Brown Nia Award for Service from the National Association of Black Storytellers.
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Ghost Stories are held Friday and Saturday nights of the festival where tellers tell “spooky/ghost tales” in the Mill Spring Park Gazebo. The park also offers The Lost State Scenic Walkway and restrooms, and houses the Storytelling Resource Place, offering artifacts for viewing.
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Connie Regan Blake, frequent host and featured performer, has taken the stage every year since the first festival in 1973.
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Jonesborough, with buildings dating back to the late 1700s, is the oldest town in Tennessee, and now offers a Main Street full of shops and restaurants, and a town offering an ongoing series of events. The town also offers guided walking tours.
The story above first appeared in our September / October 2022 issue. For more like it subscribe today or log in with your active BRC+ Membership. Thank you for your support!