Writer, Educator, and Storyteller
Proud to share that my storytelling series No, YOU Tell It! is a recipient of a 2020 Queens Arts Fund Arts Access Grant. Learn more at noyoutellit.com.
Want to bring a unique storytelling experience to your office, school, or organization? Reach out!
Save the date! Our next No, YOU Tell It! show is coming up soon: March 12th at Sunnyside Plays from 7-9 pm.
I’m excited to work with these four storytellers next week at our first story meeting.
All the work that goes into No, YOU Tell It! is worth the impact made on our storytellers and audience.
Honored by this touching testimonial from “aMuse” storyteller Pichchenda Bao.
Great audiences for No, YOU Tell It! 2019 at Dixon Place, The Astoria Bookshop, plus a student story swap at Legal Outreach.
Give a listen to live story swaps from our “Crafty” “Snapped!” and “aMuse” shows on the No, YOU Tell It! podcast.
Adored working with the amazing students in Legal Outreach’s College Bound program. Swapping stories No, YOU Tell It! style this past Saturday gave participants and audience members a new perspective on what they want to shine forth with their college application essays.
Click here for more details on the event made possible (in part) by the Queens Council on the Arts.
Honored to be a returning as a teaching artist this spring at Madison Junior School in New Jersey for their memoir unit.
Here’s a fun shot from my first day working with 200+ 7th graders! Started the wheels spinning to generate seed ideas for their personal narratives.
By the end of the unit, each student will draft, revise, and polish a personal story. This summer, I’ll edit and publish the finals into an anthology of their work. Such a thrill to help these young writers become published authors.
Lovely NYC day crafting and sharing stories with the Public Affairs team at Success Academy Charter Schools. So happy to hear they enjoyed the session as much as I did!
Huge shoutout and thank you to Kelly Jean Fitzsimmons for her amazing storytelling workshop today. My team can’t stop talking about how great it was!!! ✍️ – Heather Kirtland Tsonopoulos, Chief of Staff, Success Academy Charter Schools
Have you heard about #WorldReadAloudDay? Now you have! More answers next Friday, Feb 1st at 7 pm when The Astoria Bookshop hosts a World Read Along Day event, with four local authors including me!
Celebrate and curate a love of literacy and storytelling with community members and loved ones (and, if you like, bring a story of your own).
Excited to be co-teaching this workshop at the Writing Institute at Sarah Lawrence this fall:
Nothing informs your story like hearing someone else perform your story! Compose a creative nonfiction story using the collaborative process created by the producers of the nonfiction reading series, No, YOU Tell It!
Tuesday, September 25, 2018 until Tuesday, October 23, 2018 from 10-12 PM.
Click here for registration details.
Whether developing a true-life tale for a venue like The Moth or RISK! or working to sharpen it for publication, our “page to stage” process allows writers to gain a new perspective on the story they want to tell by hearing their words read out loud by someone else, while also improving their own stage presence.
This five-week session takes you from brainstorming, through drafting, to a finished piece of creative nonfiction.
By the end of this workshop, participants take an idea from a thematic suggestion all the way through to a polished draft, engage in useful feedback and revision techniques, and consider the importance of audience and delivery.
Click here for registration details! & Help us spread the news!!
No, YOU Tell It! is a “switched-up” storytelling series dedicated to performing true-life tales with a twist: Each participant develops their own story on the page and then flip scripts with a partner to present each other’s story on stage. We’ve found that this shared storytelling format creates a sense of trust and ownership, and blends the collaborative process of creative writing workshops with the intimacy and immediacy of theatrical performance.
