Hi Everyone,
I’m going to try to do an FGS Zoom show on our regularly scheduled day of May 21. Since I’ve never hosted an online show I’m going to start by doing an hour-long showcase of some of our regular tellers. It’ll be 7-8 folks telling stories I’ve requested. If all goes well, I’ll try to do a regular open mic FGS show on the third Thursday in June. Of course, if the CDC lets us out of the house before then we’ll have our regular live show 🙂
FGS will survive!
In the meantime, I want to tell you about Podapalooza this weekend and two great free story workshops coming up.
Workshops:
One of Seattle’s best storytellers, Bill Bernat, is holding an online workshop Monday, April 27, for anyone with a 5-minute story they’d like help with.
https://www.meetup.com/Stay-Awesome-Storytelling-Virtual-Workshop/events/zjtsrrybcgbkc/
Our regular monthly FGS workshop (now online) is happening Sunday, May 3
https://www.meetup.com/Fresh-Ground-Stories-Storytelling-Workshop/events/270206596/
The organizer of Podapalooza reached out to me a few days ago and asked if I’d let the FGS folks know about it. Tickets are pay-what-you-can. 100% of the proceeds go to GiveDirectly (https://www.givedirectly.org/), a non-profit delivering $1000 cash payments to families struggling amid COVID.
Below is info taken directly from his email:
Podapalooza (https://podapalooza.org) is a virtual podcast festival to benefit COVID-19 relief. One of the events on the schedule is a Saturday Night Story Slam, a live stream of seven storytellers worth seeing:
Dessa (https://twitter.com/dessadarling): a hip hop artist and the first person ever to have the distinction of both performing at Podapalooza and Lollapalooza.
Olga Khazan (https://twitter.com/olgakhazan): just released a book about being WEIRD
Maria Konnikova (https://twitter.com/mkonnikova): New Yorker writer turned professional poker player
Shannon Cason (https://twitter.com/shannoncason): Moth GrandSlam Champion
Gulnaz Khan (https://www.nationalgeographic.com/contributors/k/gulnaz-khan/): Nat Geo writer who used to document violence against women for Human Rights Watch
Jude Brewer (https://twitter.com/judebrewery): named the best storyteller in Portland
Juleyka Lantigua Williams (https://twitter.com/JuleykaLantigua): Founder of Lantigua Williams & Co, the podcast production studio
The story slam is this Saturday, April 25 at 8pm ET.
To attend, go to the Podapalooza website (https://podapalooza.org) and purchase a ticket to the festival.
On the day of the event, you will receive a link to the live stream.
https://www.podapalooza.org/live
https://www.givedirectly.org/
That’s all I have for now. I hope to see a bunch of your smiling faces online May 21! Not only will you hear some great stories, you’ll get to see me flail around trying to figure out how to unmute myself and get confused over who’s talking. Exciting, yes? I’ll also have a special, secret guest helping me run the show from California. Without her, FGS wouldn’t exist but almost none of you have ever met her. I think it’s time to reveal the rarely told FGS origin story.
Take care. Wash your paws, Write a letter to someone you love.
See you soon!
Paul
freshgroundstories@gmail.com
