Featured at the 25th annual Forest Storytelling Festival, Oct. 18-20, 2019…
Kevin Kling
Kevin Kling, best known for his popular commentaries on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered and his storytelling stage shows like Tales from the Charred Underbelly of the Yule Log, delivers hilarious, often tender stories. Kling’s autobiographical tales are as enchanting as they are true to life: hopping freight trains, getting hit by lightning, performing his banned play in Czechoslovakia, growing up in Minnesota, and eating things before knowing what they are.
Dolores Hydock
“Dolores talks with her hands. And her elbows. And her shoulders. When she speaks, she is literally irrepressible.” That’s how one reviewer described Dolores’ vivacious style that fills the stage with wit, energy, and a swirl of characters that populate her stories of family fireworks, food fads, true love, turnip greens, and other peculiarities of everyday life. Her award-winning personal stories, oral histories, medieval adventures, and traditional tales are, as one reviewer said, “…smart but not cynical, heartwarming yet never corny, traditional without being mundane…a neat feat!”
Dolores has been a featured teller at the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough and many other festivals, has served as Teller-in-Residence at the International Storytelling Center, and has won Resource Awards from Storytelling World Magazine for her eleven CDs of original stories.
Ray Christian
A storyteller and instructor at Appalachian State University, Ray compartmentalizes his life into three disparate segments: an impoverished childhood in a Richmond, Virginia, ghetto, 20 years serving his country in the U.S. Army, and the past two decades “doing nothing but going to school.” Christian is currently teaching The Souls of Black Folk, a course that surveys African-Americans intellectual thought and perceptions of class and race from pre-revolutionary American through the 1970s. Storytelling, like his class, encourages conversation about difficult subjects, he said. “You can’t deny a person’s individual story. Their perception is absolutely true. Factual stuff, you can debate that. But we’re not going to debate what you feel.”
Ingrid Nixon
Ingrid is an award-winning, world-traveling storyteller, who loves nothing more than to whisk away listeners on journeys of the imagination. Exploration nail-biters, lies, tall tales, traditional and personal stories—she tells them all, bringing characters to life using voices, gestures, and animated facial expressions.
As she clutches her Golden Pitchfork award, Ingrid proudly claims her title as a champion liar at at several liars contests, including at Seattle’s Northwest Folklife Festival and the Stone Soup Festival in Woodruff, SC. But it’s no lie that she was honored as the Outstanding Student Performance at East Tennessee State University. She’s also a Seattle Moth StorySLAM winner. Ingrid has received national kudos for the numerous films she has written, hosted, and narrated for Discovery Channel and the National Park Service. She has also worked as a public radio DJ and an award-winning print journalist. She currently lives in Glacier Bay National Park in Southeast Alaska where she directs the Interpretive and Education programs for the National Park Service.
Heather McNeil is unable to come, due to a family health situation. In her place, we will have Gene Tagaban
Heather is an award-winning third generation storyteller, and has represented the United States at international storytelling festivals in Scotland and New Zealand. She has collected folk tales on her trips to Africa and her ancestral homeland in Scotland. She has published two books of these tales, “Hyena and the Moon: Stories to Tell From Kenya” and “The Celtic Breeze: Stories of the Otherworld From Scotland, Ireland and Wales.” She can tell a wicked creepy ghost story, an inspiring story of a little ground squirrel standing up to a power-abusing lion, and many more.
Gene Tagaban
Gene Tagaban, “One Crazy Raven” is an influential storyteller, speaker, mentor, performer and counselor of the spirit. Gene is of the Takdeintaan clan, the Raven, Freshwater Sockeye clan from Hoonah, AK. He is the Child of the Wooshkeetaan, the Eagle, Shark clan from Juneau, AK. He is of the wolf clan from his Cherokee heritage and his last name Tagaban
comes from his Filipino heritage. Gene’s passion is working with the people teaching performing, presenting, and facilitating gatherings on prevention, empowerment, leadership, relationship, communication, self-awareness, spirit, honor and healing. He has been a featured at storytelling festivals nationally and internationally sharing traditional Native stories as well as
stories from his personal experience, family and historical events. Gene was honored to perform with the Dalai Lama at the “Seeds of Compassion” gathering in Seattle, WA. and the Nature Conservancy’s 50th anniversary with Jane Goodall. Gene is a board member of the Native Wellness Institute as well as a trainer of Choose Respect, a male engagement and mentorship
program to end Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault. He is also a specialty instructor and honorary uncle with the Wilderness Awareness School. Over the last 30 years Gene has worked nationally and internationally to create a world into which we want to belong.
