Storytelling Capital

8
S T O R Y T E L L I N G R E N A I S S A N C E
The First National
Storytelling Festival
In 1973, on a warm and
sunny October day,
Jonesborough residents
rolled an old farm wagon
into Courthouse Square
for the first National
Storytelling Festival.
While the Festival was
tiny, something happened
that October weekend
that has changed
forever our culture, this
traditional art form, and
this Tennessee town.
They were there, the
storytellers. A former
Arkansas congressman.
A Tennessee banker.
A college professor.
A western North
Carolina farmer. They
told their tales, and
they breathed life
into the first National
Storytelling Festival.
And for the small
group of people who
During the first National Storytelling
Festival, Ray Hicks stood on the back of an
old farm wagon and belted out The Heifer
Hide—an ancient tale from the Southern
Appalachian Mountains he had learned as a
child sitting on his grandfather’s knee.
sat listening—in chairs, on the curbs, cross-legged on the
grassy green—there was a bond, a special connection between
us and all who live and have ever lived. There were stories
about people we had never met, times we had never known,
places we had never been. Yet for those few magical hours,
we did know them, we did go there.
The National Storytelling Festival, the first of its kind
anywhere in the world, ignited a renaissance of storytelling
that is, even today, continuing to sweep the globe, and
transformed Jonesborough into the Storytelling Capital of
the World.
And now, people across America and the world are
rediscovering the simplicity and basic truth of the told story.
2014–2015 Jonesborough Visitors Guide
“More than anything else,
the storytelling renaissance
has been inspired by the
National Storytelling Festival in
Jonesborough, Tennessee.”
— Michael McLeod, Readers Digest
Photos: Fresh Air Photographics
Barbara McBride-
Smith (left), Michael
Parent (above), and Jay
O’Callahan (above right)
are three nationally known
tellers featured at the
annual festival.