American School of Storytelling
@amsstory.bsky.social
The American School of Storytelling is a program of classes, performances, and resources dedicated to oral storytelling and other narrative art forms. We are based in Minneapolis, MN. https://americanschoolofstorytelling.com/
“...a year doesn’t matter, and ten years are nothing. Being an artist means: not numbering and counting, but ripening like a tree, which doesn’t force its sap, and stands confidently in the storms of spring, not afraid that afterward summer may not come. It does come..." Rainer Maria Rilke
December 4, 2025 at 4:00 PM
“...a year doesn’t matter, and ten years are nothing. Being an artist means: not numbering and counting, but ripening like a tree, which doesn’t force its sap, and stands confidently in the storms of spring, not afraid that afterward summer may not come. It does come..." Rainer Maria Rilke
Joseph Conrad: “My task, which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel--it is, before all, to make you see.”
December 3, 2025 at 2:00 PM
Joseph Conrad: “My task, which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel--it is, before all, to make you see.”
"If you want to write, practice writing. Practice it for hours, not to come up with a story you can publish, but because you long to learn how to write well, because there is something that you alone can say." - Ann Patchett
Photo by Emily Dorio
Photo by Emily Dorio
December 2, 2025 at 3:04 PM
"If you want to write, practice writing. Practice it for hours, not to come up with a story you can publish, but because you long to learn how to write well, because there is something that you alone can say." - Ann Patchett
Photo by Emily Dorio
Photo by Emily Dorio
Rex Stout: “The difference between me & most people is that I'm perfectly aware that all my important decisions are made for me by my subconscious. My frontal lobes are just kidding themselves that they decide anything at all. All they do is think up reasons for the decisions that are already made."
December 1, 2025 at 3:13 PM
Rex Stout: “The difference between me & most people is that I'm perfectly aware that all my important decisions are made for me by my subconscious. My frontal lobes are just kidding themselves that they decide anything at all. All they do is think up reasons for the decisions that are already made."
Though often paraphrased, Mark Twain said: “Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.”
November 30, 2025 at 3:00 PM
Though often paraphrased, Mark Twain said: “Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.”
“To be stories at all they must be a series of events: but it must be understood that this series - the plot, as we call it - is only really a net whereby to catch something else.” - C. S. Lewis
November 29, 2025 at 3:00 PM
“To be stories at all they must be a series of events: but it must be understood that this series - the plot, as we call it - is only really a net whereby to catch something else.” - C. S. Lewis
On this day after Thanksgiving, this from Rita Mae Brown: "Art is moral passion married to entertainment. Moral passion without entertainment is propaganda, and entertainment without moral passion is television".
November 28, 2025 at 2:00 PM
On this day after Thanksgiving, this from Rita Mae Brown: "Art is moral passion married to entertainment. Moral passion without entertainment is propaganda, and entertainment without moral passion is television".
Eugene Ionesco: "Culture cannot be separated from politics. The arts, philosophy and metaphysics, religion and the sciences, constitute culture. Politics is the science of organizing our relationships to allow for the development of life in society."
November 26, 2025 at 4:44 PM
Eugene Ionesco: "Culture cannot be separated from politics. The arts, philosophy and metaphysics, religion and the sciences, constitute culture. Politics is the science of organizing our relationships to allow for the development of life in society."
More Arundhati Roy: “Writers imagine that they cull stories from the world. I'm beginning to believe that vanity makes them think so. That it's actually the other way around. Stories cull writers from the world. Stories reveal themselves to us.”
November 25, 2025 at 6:18 PM
More Arundhati Roy: “Writers imagine that they cull stories from the world. I'm beginning to believe that vanity makes them think so. That it's actually the other way around. Stories cull writers from the world. Stories reveal themselves to us.”
“The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably... In the Great Stories you know who lives, who dies, who finds love, who doesn’t. And yet you want to know again. That is their mystery and their magic.” -Arundhati Roy
November 24, 2025 at 3:28 PM
“The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably... In the Great Stories you know who lives, who dies, who finds love, who doesn’t. And yet you want to know again. That is their mystery and their magic.” -Arundhati Roy
In anticipation of Thanksgiving let me suggest that one of the values of getting family and friends together is to tell stories. Why not consider recording a few this year to add to a family archive and tell a few stories prompted by looking at those old pictures you haven't seen in years?
November 23, 2025 at 3:00 PM
In anticipation of Thanksgiving let me suggest that one of the values of getting family and friends together is to tell stories. Why not consider recording a few this year to add to a family archive and tell a few stories prompted by looking at those old pictures you haven't seen in years?
Terry Gilliam: “It's about expanding how you see the world. I think we live in an age where we're just hammered, hammered to think this is what the world is. Television's saying, everything's saying 'That's the world.' And it's not the world. The world is a million possible things.”
November 22, 2025 at 4:00 PM
Terry Gilliam: “It's about expanding how you see the world. I think we live in an age where we're just hammered, hammered to think this is what the world is. Television's saying, everything's saying 'That's the world.' And it's not the world. The world is a million possible things.”
Isaac Bashevis Singer once said: “When I was a little boy, they called me a liar, but now that I am grown up, they call me a writer.”
November 21, 2025 at 2:00 PM
Isaac Bashevis Singer once said: “When I was a little boy, they called me a liar, but now that I am grown up, they call me a writer.”
Today is poet Thomas McGrath's birthday. Here is one of his –
How could I have come so far?
(And always on such dark trails?)
I must have traveled by the light
Shining from the faces of all those I have loved.
How could I have come so far?
(And always on such dark trails?)
I must have traveled by the light
Shining from the faces of all those I have loved.
November 20, 2025 at 2:00 PM
Today is poet Thomas McGrath's birthday. Here is one of his –
How could I have come so far?
(And always on such dark trails?)
I must have traveled by the light
Shining from the faces of all those I have loved.
How could I have come so far?
(And always on such dark trails?)
I must have traveled by the light
Shining from the faces of all those I have loved.
Poet Sharon Olds has said, "To a poet, the human community is like the community of birds to a bird, singing to each other. Love is one of the reasons we are singing to one another, love of language itself, love of sound, love of singing itself, & love of the other birds."
Photo by Brett Hall Jones
Photo by Brett Hall Jones
November 19, 2025 at 2:00 PM
Poet Sharon Olds has said, "To a poet, the human community is like the community of birds to a bird, singing to each other. Love is one of the reasons we are singing to one another, love of language itself, love of sound, love of singing itself, & love of the other birds."
Photo by Brett Hall Jones
Photo by Brett Hall Jones
Margaret Atwood said, “A book may outlive its author, and it moves too, and it too can be said to change - but not in the manner of the telling. It changes in the manner of the reading."
November 18, 2025 at 2:00 PM
Margaret Atwood said, “A book may outlive its author, and it moves too, and it too can be said to change - but not in the manner of the telling. It changes in the manner of the reading."
“Storytellers are a threat. They threaten all champions of control, they frighten usurpers of the right-to-freedom of the human spirit -- in state, in church or mosque, in party congress, in the university or wherever.” Chinua Achebe & the true role of story. To remind, remember, repair the broken.
November 16, 2025 at 7:52 PM
“Storytellers are a threat. They threaten all champions of control, they frighten usurpers of the right-to-freedom of the human spirit -- in state, in church or mosque, in party congress, in the university or wherever.” Chinua Achebe & the true role of story. To remind, remember, repair the broken.
English Sci-Fi author J. G. Ballard said, "We live in a world ruled by fictions of every kind… The fiction is already there. The writer's task is to invent the reality."
Photograph by Fay Godwin
Photograph by Fay Godwin
November 15, 2025 at 3:00 PM
English Sci-Fi author J. G. Ballard said, "We live in a world ruled by fictions of every kind… The fiction is already there. The writer's task is to invent the reality."
Photograph by Fay Godwin
Photograph by Fay Godwin
Today is Astrid Lindgren's birthday. She who is best known for Pippi Longstocking once said, “I don't want to write for adults. I want to write for readers who can perform miracles. Only children perform miracles when they read.”
November 14, 2025 at 2:00 PM
Today is Astrid Lindgren's birthday. She who is best known for Pippi Longstocking once said, “I don't want to write for adults. I want to write for readers who can perform miracles. Only children perform miracles when they read.”
Robert Louis Stevenson said, "Do not write merely to be understood. Write so you cannot possibly be misunderstood." Or to put it in the more common vernacular: "Mean what you say and say what you mean."
November 13, 2025 at 2:00 PM
Robert Louis Stevenson said, "Do not write merely to be understood. Write so you cannot possibly be misunderstood." Or to put it in the more common vernacular: "Mean what you say and say what you mean."
Today is Wallace Shawn's Birthday. Which Wally do you like best? The one from "My Dinner With Andre", "The Princess Bride", or "Young Sheldon"?
November 12, 2025 at 2:00 PM
Today is Wallace Shawn's Birthday. Which Wally do you like best? The one from "My Dinner With Andre", "The Princess Bride", or "Young Sheldon"?
“But how could you live and have no story to tell?” - Fyodor Dostoevsky
November 11, 2025 at 2:00 PM
“But how could you live and have no story to tell?” - Fyodor Dostoevsky
Johann (AKA Fredrich) Schiller said, "Deeper meaning resides in the fairy tales told me in my childhood than any truth that is taught in life.” To which we suggest that even though deeper meaning does reside in fairy tales, those meanings requires both feeling & experience to fully understand.
November 10, 2025 at 3:46 PM
Johann (AKA Fredrich) Schiller said, "Deeper meaning resides in the fairy tales told me in my childhood than any truth that is taught in life.” To which we suggest that even though deeper meaning does reside in fairy tales, those meanings requires both feeling & experience to fully understand.
“The more one knows fairy tales the less fantastical they appear; they can be vehicles of the grimmest realism, expressing hope against all the odds with gritted teeth.” - Marina Warner
November 9, 2025 at 3:00 PM
“The more one knows fairy tales the less fantastical they appear; they can be vehicles of the grimmest realism, expressing hope against all the odds with gritted teeth.” - Marina Warner
In telling the story of Dracula, Bram Stoker created not merely a tale but an iconic embodiment of dread. He then comments on the nature of writing and imagination thus: "If you cannot write well, you cannot think well; if you cannot think well, others will do your thinking for you."
November 8, 2025 at 3:00 PM
In telling the story of Dracula, Bram Stoker created not merely a tale but an iconic embodiment of dread. He then comments on the nature of writing and imagination thus: "If you cannot write well, you cannot think well; if you cannot think well, others will do your thinking for you."