About Us
Our Mission
- The specific purpose of the Sacramento Storytellers Guild (Guild) is to promote the art of quality storytelling through performance, education and community interaction. Storytelling is an age-old art. Originally, the principle means for imparting news and knowledge, it is a powerful tool for communicating history and values, as stories come from every culture, time, and place. Storytelling involves the projection of mental, descriptive and emotional images using the spoken word, signs, and gesture. Its interactive quality heightens it effectiveness for educational and literary uses, involving the listener as well as the storyteller.
- The Guild provides support to storytellers through with storytelling venues, training, and informational programs. The Guild provides professional level artistic interaction to the develop storytellers, as well as storytelling resources for the community, through educational programs, training, research, productions, and referrals. The Guild offers periodic classes in storytelling, and publishes a monthly summary of its programs, providing information on local, regional, and national storytelling events. The Guild also maintains a current list of storytellers available to the community.
- The Guild promotes and enhances storytelling in the community through educational programs regarding storytelling, encouragement of development of storytelling programs, cultivation of interest in all storytelling literatures and purposed writings, service as a liaison between storytellers and storytelling groups and the community, training and information services, and referral programs to match storytellers with school, library, recreational and entertainment, and community groups.
- The Sacramento Storytellers Guild provides performances in the community on a consistent basis, and periodic special events at a variety of locations, featuring a broad spectrum of storytellers and storytelling experiences. More informal meetings will be held for story swap and critique among storytellers.
- The Guild maintains resources for storytellers of every level of experience and will assist and facilitate other community groups relative to storytelling. Through all these activities, the Sacramento Storytellers Guild works to preserve the art of storytelling and promote its revival, providing high quality storytelling services to all sectors of the community through:
- 1. Storytelling programs of a variety of sources and styles
- 2. Educational programs to inform the community about storytelling in schools, libraries, recreational facilities and private locations
- 3. Training programs to encourage new storytellers of every age, and
- 4. Referral services to match storytellers with community groups.
Our Board Members
- Joyce Ormond is the President of the Sacramento Storytellers Guild. As a child, surrounded by adults, she grew up creating her imaginary world and telling stories. She discovered early in her 40 year teaching career that storytelling was a valuable teaching tool. Retiring in 2000 she joined the Sacramento Storytellers Guild and an avocation of storytelling to adults . She has attended many workshops and classes, both as a participant and a presenter, developing storytelling skills. She has had the pleasure of telling in many different settings both nationally and with the use of zoom, internationally. Her love sharing stories grows stronger everyday.
- Karen Daly is currently playing three roles for the Sacramento Storytellers Guild as the Treasurer and the Secretary. She is also the Vice President and will take over leading the Guild in 2025. She has been a member of the Guild since 2010 but has told stories all her life. She admits she has a great imagination and would make up stories when she was young. This continued when she had children and worked at their preschool and then elementary school. She joined Toastmasters International in 1990 in Redding, CA which gave her an open format to tell stories. She is a member and officer of the Aesop's Fablers Toastmasters Club. Karen has been Secretary, President and now Treasurer of the Sacramento Storytellers Guild.
- Andrew Laufer is a Board member at Large of the Sacramento Storytellers Guild. He is our webmaster and provides tech support at our monthly programs. He started writing his personal stories in 2014 and telling them on stage a few years later. His published work: Papa Laufer's Stories: Positive Reflections of Life in America is available on Amazon. You can listen to a page from Papa Laufer's Stories at https://writersontheair.com/?p=3156. You can also type his name into the YouTube search box to find his YouTube channel and watch him tell his stories. With the advent of Zoom presentations in 2020 he has been heard tellling his stories world-wide.
- Ed Lewis is a Board Member at large. He is a storytelling "groupie" attending as many storytelling events as possible. He is a member of the Storytelling Association of California, as well as one of the Pacific Region Liaisons to the National Storytelling Network. Ed is a retired Early Childhood Education professor and has taught storytelling classes for teachers and had the good fortune of telling stories to children as Eddie Spaghetti and adults throughout the world during his summer vacations. It has been a true pleasure for Ed to share personal stories and tall tales to adult audiences since 1994.
- Vicki Carrol is a Board Member at Large. She is an outstanding poet and has taken up storytelling as a natural adjunct to her poetic propensities. She is our membership secretary and also functions as our selfless hostess at the monthly programs bringing refreshments for all to enjoy.
- Terry Chekon is a Board Member at Large. She began telling stories in 1963 as a children's librarian with the Cnoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore, Md. She continued telling stories to children as as a children's librarian and as Coodrinator of Youth Services with the Sacramento Public Library from 1973 until her retirement in 2003. In her retirement she began telling stories to adult audiences as a member of the Sacramento Storyteller's Guild. She co-founded Straight Talk Storytelling, which featured tellers sharing tier personal stories to audiences at the Avid Reader in Sacramento.
- Susan Carroll, Board Member at Large, was raised in Kentucky hearing stories of WWII and the Civil war like it was yesterday, She has always appreciated a good story and is just starting to learn how to tell a good story, She became involved with the group after being impressed with the skill of the storyteller members. She sews, plays the banjo, is an artist, writes some poetry, and is a retired civil engineer.
- Adele Zagofsky, Board Member at Large, was raised in New York City, and lived in Pennsylvania for most of her adult life. She followed her daughters to California, where they all settled. Adele, a retired computer nerd, is now an avid gardener, mosaic artist and loves to experiment with food. She has always been making others laugh, but didn’t realize it was a form of storytelling til her husband dragged her to a Storytelling Guild meeting a number of years ago. She is currently secretary of the Sacramento Storytellers Guild.
- Walter Wilson, Board Member at Large, is a third generation Californian on both sides of his family, going back to the 1880’s. He is retired and came to Storytelling through his participation in Toastmasters. He enjoys telling stories and is delighted to have found the Sacramento Storytellers Guild. One of his passions is history, and he particularly enjoys telling stories about unusual historical events. He also enjoys telling Folk Tales, Fables, Tall Tales and Narrative Poems.
Our History
- The Sacramento Storytellers Guild began in 1982, with a few storytellers meeting in people’s homes. We didn’t call it the Guild then,
- After a while we started gathering and performing in the Martin Luther King Library in South Sacramento, and the Effie Yeaw Nature Center in North Sacramento. Everyone was welcome to attend and tell a story if they wished.
- But members of the group wanted a time to share developing work and to experiment so the group started hosting members-only meetings in their homes as well. Mary McGrath, Carol Lerner, Gail Ryall, Dick and Judy Kinter, Elizabeth Gibson and Jan Yates.
- These far-flung places became harder to get to, so a central location was sought. The McKinley Library became the home of the performance meetings. About that time the Sacramento Storytellers Guild incorporated and adopted its current name.
- McKinley Library was closed for major remodeling and another home was sought for the Guild meetings. For a time we met at Luna’s Café and then the Sacramento Youth Hostel was willing to open its doors for the performances while the members-only meetings continued in storytellers homes.
- As circumstances changed, we used space at Musician Hall on Del Paso Boulevard before moving the adventures of the Guild to the Hart Senior Center. When the Hart Center raised the rent of its meeting rooms beyond the means of the Guild, Eskaton Monroe Lodge on Freeport Blvd offered their facilities to us at no charge.
- Because of the COVID pandemic, the Eskaton Lodge was no longer available to hold performances and the Sacramento Poetry Center in downtown Sacramento provided us with a NEW AND IMPROVED HOME FOR OUR MONTHLY PROGRAMS.
- We are a resilient bunch, committed to storytelling at any cost. You can expect our history to keep going on and on.