Giving Tuesday

Georgia Mountain Storytelling Festival has joined #GivingTuesday, a global day of giving that harnesses the collective power of individuals, communities and organizations to encourage philanthropy and to celebrate generosity worldwide. Occurring this year on November 28, #GivingTuesday is held annually on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving (in the US) and the widely recognized shopping events Black Friday and Cyber Monday to kick off the holiday giving season and inspire people to collaborate in improving their local communities and to give back in impactful ways to the charities and causes they support. 

Please consider participating in Giving Tuesday by donating to support the festival's community outreach programs. As always, we will be giving free festival tickets to students 18 and under and offering discounts to seniors. Additionally, this year GMSF will offer a very special class on storytelling as a form of healing for veterans and their families, who can attend at no cost. Acclaimed teller and facilitator Regi Carpenter will lead this class and join Lyn Ford, Michael Reno Harrell, Andy Offutt Irwin, and Rev. Robert Jones for two days of telling and workshops at our 2018 festival.

This is what your donation can do:

• $10 pays for a student to attend the festival
• $50 helps pay for Braille copies of the festival's program
• $100 helps pay for our sign language interpreter for the festival
• $150 pays for a veteran to attend the special class
• $200 or more helps us continue to bring in first-rate storytellers to teach and delight

Free Workshop for Veterans

Regi Carpenter, a professional storyteller who has presented therapeutic workshops throughout the United States, South America, and Asia for hospice organizations, hospitals, veterans, cancer treatment centers, and bereavement organizations, will offer a workshop titled “Using Traditional Folk and Fairy Tales to Elicit Personal Stories and Coping Strategies for Veterans.” The workshop will help veterans express their own stories and develop coping strategies for responding productively to confusion, depression, loss, and the challenges of re-entry. Many stories from the world’s folk and fairytale traditions explore these issues, and research supports what storytellers have long intuited: when hearing a traditional story, veterans more readily articulate their feelings and are prompted to create coping techniques that build resilience and resourcefulness. This interactive workshop will combine listening, writing, and discussion. Through working with a traditional story and their own stories, participants will clarify conflicts and self-defeating beliefs; identify coping solutions; and discover action steps toward desired outcomes. Through this process, participants will be empowered to develop a sense of belonging, a capacity for personal reflection, healthy emotional outlets, and a livelier imagination. Moreover, they will learn to create meaningful social bonds by practicing listening and speaking skills.  

This workshop is FREE OF CHARGE for veterans. It will be held April 15 from 2:00-5:00PM in Blairsville, Georgia. Workshop participants will also receive free tickets to the 2018 festival.

Please contact us at info@gamountainstoryfest.org to sign up. 

Featured Tellers for the 2018 Festival

The 2018 festival will feature Regi Carpenter, known for her family stories and award-winning personal narrative of mental illness Snap!; Lyn Ford, a fourth-generation Afrilachian teller of “home fried” tales; Andy Offutt Irwin, a Georgia humorist and balladeer; Michael Reno Harrell, a gifted songwriter known for his Appalachian grit and wit; and Rev. Robert Jones, Sr., a multi-instrumentalist and historian of the African American musical tradition. Links to their websites can be found on our home page and on our 2018 festival page (under "about" on our home page).

GMSF is on the move!

The festival has undergone tremendous growth over the past three years, so much so that we can no longer fit into the venue we have been using at Young Harris College. Union County Schools has graciously offered us their beautiful new Fine Arts Center for the 2018 festival. It has theater-style seating for 900, plentiful parking, and many other perks. So, we're moving 10 minutes down the road to Blairsville. With this change will come exciting opportunities for expanding our community outreach programs. Please get in touch with us via info@gamountainstoryfest.org to learn more, and stay tuned for more information about our new venue.