Dear Friends of Corn Island,

As some of you have noticed, there isn’t much on our website about what’s going on with the Corn Island Storytelling Festival this year. For a number of reasons, we’ve cut down on the public events that we’ll be having this year and, unfortunately, this includes our annual Ghost Tales event.

In the past few years, working with state and city agencies, we’ve attempted to provide more events for young people in the community who would typically not be exposed to storytelling. This year we’re going focus entirely on that tradition with a number of private charitable events at special needs schools and group homes.

Our only public events will be taking place on Saturday, October 11 at the Clifton Center located at 2117 Payne Street in the Clifton area of Louisville. Saturday afternoon, starting at 3pm, we’ll have booths available for people who want to tell their own story. With permission, we’ll use selected stories for a CD of Corn Island Front Porch Stories. If you're interested in scheduling a time on Oct 11, click here or on the link above.

Following the story collecting, at 7:30pm at the Clifton Center, there will be a Corn Island - Kentucky Homefront collaborative show. Storyteller-musicians Sparky and Rhonda Rucker will share the stage with the Juggernaut Jug Band for an evening of music and tales.

We hope you’re able to join us for the afternoon and evening of sharing.

Our website will be updated soon with specifics about the day, so please check back. We appreciate the number of people who have been asking for information, and we’re sorry for the delay and the change of plans. Please be assured that Corn Island Storytelling is still committed to keeping storytelling alive and accessible. This break will allow us to regroup and be back – and better than ever – in 2009!

See you at the Front Porch!

Sincerely,

Heather Dotson, Executive Director, Corn Island Storytelling

 

                 MISSION STATEMENT

Corn Island Storytelling holds as its central tenet that storytelling is at the root of cultural identity and interpersonal communication. It is a compellation of history one story at a time -- the common denominator of human experience. Storytelling is an art form that bridges cultural diversity, gender barriers and age differences.

The Corn Island Storytelling Festival, the organization's largest annual event, tries to strike a balance between the popularity and marketability of ghost stories and the cultural, historical and literary aspects of oral and musical presentation.

The International Order of E.A.R.S., founded in 1985, is a 501(c)(3), 100% volunteer-based organization dedicated to cultivating and perpetuating storytelling as both an art form and as a means of cultural preservation.