Cape Girardeau Storytelling Festival

I'm just back from the Cape Girardeau Storytelling Festival in Missouri, right on the Mississippi River, where I was one of two regional storytellers. It was a great time, better even than the first year in 2008, in part due to pleasant weather. According to the organizers, there were nearly 3,100 listeners from 16 states this year. It's hard to believe that this well-run festival is only three years old.

One of the great joys of festival performing is listening to the other storytellers. This year, the headliners were Donald Davis, Minton Sparks, Kevin Kling and Syd Lieberman. It was also fun to hear and hang out with Marilyn Kinsella, the other regional teller--Marilyn was also a regional teller in 2008. My good friend Joyce Slater ran the story swap, which was a big success, with more people wanting to tell than there was time. Storytelling is certainly growing in Cape.

I'd heard Don and Syd many times, but had only heard Minton once and had enjoyed listening to Kevin on NPR but never live. What a treat to listen to them all!

I couldn't find a video of Donald, but here are some of the others.

That's John Jackson playing guitar. The combination was amazing.

These storytellers are SO good in person--it's worth going out of your way to hear them.

Cape Girardeau Storytelling Festival

It's sunny today! Yesterday was gray and cold, yet the first day of the first-ever Cape Girardeau Storytelling Festival was well attended. About 700 kids were brought in from area schools during the day, so they joined quite a few other attendees. We're hoping for good crowds today and tomorrow.

The organizers have been working on the festival for about two years, after getting inspired by the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, TN. They decided to start with a big splash, so they have a wonderful lineup of four headliners (Donald Davis, Sheila Kay Adams, Willy Claflin and Dan Keding), and five regional tellers (Joyce Slater, Jim Two Crows Wallen, Marilyn Kinsella, Doug Mishler and me). Blake Travis was scheduled but was very ill, so he's not here.

I'd never been to this pretty Mississippi river town. There's a long mural of river history down by the the banks, on the walls that protect the town from flooding. They've had incredible rain this year (one day a few weeks ago, they had 13 inches, I heard!), so the river is high. Today in one of the breaks I'll go down to have a look.

Time to go. I'll try to write more about this later.