I was returning to the U.K. from a tour of duty in the Far East with the Royal Air Force in 1971. While flying over the Persian Gulf in our VC10 aircraft, the captain asked me to join him in the co-pilot seat. Thousands of feet above the ground that night, we flew over hundreds of lights below, spread across the desert floor. Nomadic Bedouins huddled around campfires, sharing tales. Another time, while hiking in the Pukaskwa National Park of Canada a few years ago with my son Gareth, we attended a ceremony honoring the Anishinaabek and Metis First Nations, who were celebrating their ancestors and their lands by the sharing of their stories. Over time, these experiences inspired me to explore the potential for an annual gathering to further the art of storytelling as a way of teaching, understanding, respecting, and appreciating other cultures, nations, races, and religions.

As children, we learned of cave drawings telling stories of hunters and gatherers. Traditionally, stories were shared when bringing in the harvest, celebrating weddings, funerals, and tribal gatherings, and often sitting around fires, sharing and reflecting on our humanity and profound connections. Here, in southern Minnesota, the First Nation cultures including the local Dakota people, continue to pass on their rich history and knowledge in the form of oral storytelling. Listening to a good story that is well-told is a wonderful source of entertainment. We come to understand people who are different from us while experiencing that very diverse community. Telling stories is one of the most powerful tools any teacher or leader possesses to educate and inspire others. While sharing stories, we engage our communities in active listening and mutual storytelling. In our modern world, not only are our stories still shared around the campfire, they often appear through our digital media as well.

In October 2024 we will gather here, in Winona, Minnesota, on the banks of the upper Mississippi River, to celebrate and share together in the great tradition of storytelling at the annual Sandbar Storytelling Festival. Revisit the land where travelers for thousands of years have navigated up and down the Mississippi from its source in the northern part of our state to its union with the Gulf of Mexico. Winona, poised on the banks of this grand North American waterway, will annually invite some of the very best storytellers from points throughout the world to share their tales with us.

Please, consider yourself invited to Winona. Join us as we share in the great oral tradition of storytelling in the Driftless Region of southeastern Minnesota. Here, we will listen to some of the finest tellers of tales and enjoy the diverse cultures they represent!

Kind regards,

Hywel ‘Taff’ Roberts
Artistic Director, Sandbar Storytelling Festival

I come from a strong tradition of storytelling, from my father’s legends of Ireland to my mother’s tales of childhood adventures on a dust bowl-era farm. It’s really no surprise that I started telling my own stories when I was about 7, regaling my younger sisters with bedtime stories under the covers until we all fell asleep. Most of the stories I tell now are in printed form, but I continue to appreciate the importance of the spoken word. I strongly believe storytelling is the glue that holds communities together and the vehicle for reaching other communities. The Sandbar Storytelling Festival brings storytellers from all over and invites us to listen. I guarantee we’ll like what we hear.

Terri Karsten
President of the Festival Board, Sandbar Storytelling Festival

Award winning author
www.terrikarsten.com

We are our stories

Humans are creatures of story. We create and share stories as naturally as we breathe. Stories are how we know the world. Know each other. Know ourselves. All through the magic of the spoken word.

No one will ever know who was the first storyteller or what was the first story. We do know the stories that told of the first man, the first woman; of how they came to be and how the world they and we live in came to be.

Stories were told of thunder gods, of why the rains fall and where the fire that lit the story circle had its origin. They told of heroes, of ogres and demons, of fair maidens and shady scoundrels.  Stories passed on wisdom, warned of folly, made us laugh, gave us courage.

Stories became our histories, explained why we would do this and not that. They told us where we came from, who we had become and what would become of us. They hold our memories, our hopes, our fears, our deepest longings.

Our shared stories bind us to family and friends. Stories are shared with those we meet to give us common ground, common understanding. We tell our stories every day, many times each day, and take in story after story in return.

We are our stories. Our stories tell of who we were, who we are, who we aspire to be.

Come join us in sharing stories. Come join us in sharing the magic of the spoken word.

— Jerome Christenson

Some folks call it quirky. Others find it just a little bit weird – but hey—what can you expect of a city where the Mississippi River flows west to east and no one who lives there finds anything odd about it.

Some places like to think of themselves as storied cities, but Winona, Minnesota, nestled in the shadow of towering river bluffs, is a city of stories.

Stories of old chief Wapasha,  proud in the brilliant red coat and gleaming gold medal awarded him by King George’s own officer for service to His Majesty and the British Empire against the upstart American republic.  Then there are the tales of the settlers’ first Christmas feast, topped off by carols and doughnuts fried fresh in ‘coon fat.

There was the first railroad swing bridge across the Mississippi crashing into the river under the weight of the first train after the bridge tender failed to secure the connections before heading home for lunch.

And how J.R. Watkins turned the recipe for horse liniment brewed up in his woodshed into the world’s first multi-national direct marketing company.

Folks still talk about how the Feds sent a busload of prohibition agents to dry out a town that wanted to stay wet and when, after mysteriously failing to find any bootleggers at home, found their bus had suddenly fallen into serious disrepair – tires flat, windows busted, headlights knocked out… And they still wonder why, when the state vice squad came down to raid the bordellos, long a well known civic attraction on Second Street, the first the local police knew of the plan was when they were told to get the jail ready for some unexpected guests.

Stories. Winona is full of stories… The well respected business man who hired an amateur hit-man to do in his wife so he could run off with the high school homecoming queen … to no one’s good end. Stories to explain why locals long referred to their hometown as the city with “the boat that don’t float, the plane that don’t fly, and the nun out of order…”

Can’t think of a better place for a storytelling festival…come and share yours!

— Jerome Christenson