A Life In Storytelling

One of art's purest challenges is to translate a human being into words. The New Yorker has met this challenge more successfully and more originally than any other modern American journal. It has indelibly shaped the genre known as the Profile. Starting with light-fantastic evocations of glamorous and idiosyncratic figures of the twenties and thirties, such as Henry Luce and Isadora Duncan, and continuing to the present, with complex pictures of such contemporaries as Mikhail Baryshnikov and Richard Pryor, this collection of New Yorker Profiles presents readers with a portrait gallery of some of the most prominent figures of the twentieth century. These Profiles are literary-journalistic investigations into character and accomplishment, motive and madness, beauty and ugliness, and are unrivalled in their range, their variety of style, and their embrace of humanity. Including these twenty-eight profiles: “Mr. Hunter’s Grave” by Joseph Mitchell “Secrets of the Magus” by Mark Singer “Isadora” by Janet Flanner “The Soloist” by Joan Acocella “Time . . . Fortune . . . Life . . . Luce” by Walcott Gibbs “Nobody Better, Better Than Nobody” by Ian Frazier “The Mountains of Pi” by Richard Preston “Covering the Cops” by Calvin Trillin “Travels in Georgia” by John McPhee “The Man Who Walks on Air” by Calvin Tomkins “A House on Gramercy Park” by Geoffrey Hellman “How Do You Like It Now, Gentlemen?” by Lillian Ross “The Education of a Prince” by Alva Johnston “White Like Me” by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. “Wunderkind” by A. J. Liebling “Fifteen Years of The Salto Mortale” by Kenneth Tynan “The Duke in His Domain” by Truman Capote “A Pryor Love” by Hilton Als “Gone for Good” by Roger Angell “Lady with a Pencil” by Nancy Franklin “Dealing with Roseanne” by John Lahr “The Coolhunt” by Malcolm Gladwell “Man Goes to See a Doctor” by Adam Gopnik “Show Dog” by Susan Orlean “Forty-One False Starts” by Janet Malcolm “The Redemption” by Nicholas Lemann “Gore Without a Script” by Nicholas Lemann “Delta Nights” by Bill Buford

"There is pure gold here for those who want to understand the rules of the old ways. ... [The book] has a convincing sureness, an intensity which cannot be denied, a strong sense of family. ... Candidly, and often with sly humour, the three women discuss early white-Indian relations, the Klondike gold rush, the epidemics, the starvation, the healthy and wealthy times, and building of the Alaska Highway. ... Integrity is here, and wisdom. There is no doubting the authenticity of the voices. As women, they had power and they used it wisely, and through their words and Cruikshank's skills, you will change your mind if you think the anthropological approach to oral history can only be dull."--Barry Broadfoot, Toronto Globe and Mail.

Perfect for fans of Rain Reign, this middle-grade novel The Brave is about a boy with an undiagnosed anxiety issue and his move to a reservation to live with his biological mother. Collin can't help himself—he has a mental health condition that finds him counting every letter spoken to him. It's a quirk that makes him a prime target for bullies, and frustrates the adults around him, including his father. When Collin asked to leave yet another school, his dad decides to send him to live in Minnesota with the mother he's never met. She is Ojibwe, and lives on a reservation. Collin arrives in Duluth with his loyal dog, Seven, and quickly finds his mom and his new home to be warm, welcoming, and accepting of his disability. Collin’s quirk is matched by that of his neighbor, Orenda, a girl who lives mostly in her treehouse and believes she is turning into a butterfly. With Orenda’s help, Collin works hard to learn the best ways to manage his anxiety disorder. His real test comes when he must step up for his new friend and trust his new family.

A Life in Storytelling contains the reflections and lessons from one of the most noted storytellers of our times. Fifty years of storytelling has provided Binnie Tate Wilkin with the experiences and insights to form the basis of a text for the storyteller, both for the professional librarian, teacher or parent wanting to provide children with substance through story. The sections of the book are designed to provide background material for the art and craft of storytelling, the methods and uses of storytelling, sources and examples of stories, and a broad selection of over 100 stories briefly annotated. Included are sections that explain how to derive or adapt stories from current events, history, or imaginative writings and a detailed treatment in the use of dance in storytelling, a technique that, if not invented by Wilkin, has become a trademark of her approach. The treatment is always informal and personal and is interleaved with anecdotes drawn from the author’s more than 50 years of storytelling.

A New York Times bestseller! A pioneering and timely study of how to navigate life's biggest transitions with meaning, purpose, and skill Bruce Feiler, author of the New York Times bestsellers The Secrets of Happy Families and Council of Dads, has long explored the stories that give our lives meaning. Galvanized by a personal crisis, he spent the last few years crisscrossing the country, collecting hundreds of life stories in all fifty states from Americans who’d been through major life changes—from losing jobs to losing loved ones; from changing careers to changing relationships; from getting sober to getting healthy to simply looking for a fresh start. He then spent a year coding these stories, identifying patterns and takeaways that can help all of us survive and thrive in times of change. What Feiler discovered was a world in which transitions are becoming more plentiful and mastering the skills to manage them is more urgent for all of us. The idea that we’ll have one job, one relationship, one source of happiness is hopelessly outdated. We all feel unnerved by this upheaval. We’re concerned that our lives are not what we expected, that we’ve veered off course, living life out of order. But we’re not alone. Life Is in the Transitions introduces the fresh, illuminating vision of the nonlinear life, in which each of us faces dozens of disruptors. One in ten of those becomes what Feiler calls a lifequake, a massive change that leads to a life transition. The average length of these transitions is five years. The upshot: We all spend half our lives in this unsettled state. You or someone you know is going through one now. The most exciting thing Feiler identified is a powerful new tool kit for navigating these pivotal times. Drawing on his extraordinary trove of insights, he lays out specific strategies each of us can use to reimagine and rebuild our lives, often stronger than before. From a master storyteller with an essential message, Life Is in the Transitions can move readers of any age to think deeply about times of change and how to transform them into periods of creativity and growth.

In this illuminating and theoretically sophisticated study of indigenous oral narratives, Julie Cruikshank moves beyond the text to explore the social power and significance of storytelling. Circumpolar Native peoples today experience strikingly different and often competing systems of narrative and knowledge. These systems include more traditional oral stories; the authoritative, literate voice of the modern state; and the narrative forms used by academic disciplines to represent them to outsiders.

From the author of Exhalation, an award-winning short story collection that blends "absorbing storytelling with meditations on the universe, being, time and space ... raises questions about the nature of reality and what it is to be human" (The New York Times). Stories of Your Life and Others delivers dual delights of the very, very strange and the heartbreakingly familiar, often presenting characters who must confront sudden change—the inevitable rise of automatons or the appearance of aliens—with some sense of normalcy. With sharp intelligence and humor, Chiang examines what it means to be alive in a world marked by uncertainty, but also by beauty and wonder. An award-winning collection from one of today's most lauded writers, Stories of Your Life and Others is a contemporary classic. Includes “Story of Your Life”—the basis for the major motion picture Arrival

A five-time Moth GrandSLAM winner and bestselling novelist shows how to tell a great story — and why doing so matters. Whether we realize it or not, we are always telling stories. On a first date or job interview, at a sales presentation or therapy appointment, with family or friends, we are constantly narrating events and interpreting emotions and actions. In this compelling book, storyteller extraordinaire Matthew Dicks presents wonderfully straightforward and engaging tips and techniques for constructing, telling, and polishing stories that will hold the attention of your audience (no matter how big or small). He shows that anyone can learn to be an appealing storyteller, that everyone has something “storyworthy” to express, and, perhaps most important, that the act of creating and telling a tale is a powerful way of understanding and enhancing your own life.