Mary Ann Blue has thirty years of classroom experience. She presently teaches Spanish and coaches storytelling at San Antonio’s Saint Mary’s Hall.  She has presented workshops on teaching language through storytelling for professional organizations, including the American Council on Teaching Foreign Language.  Mary Ann is a performance artist and event organizer who has been a leader in the Texas storytelling community for over twenty years.  She has been featured at the Texas Storytelling Festival, George West Storyfest, PBS “Barney and Friends” and as keynoter for UTSA’s 2010 Storytelling Festival.  She serves on the Tejas Storytelling Association Board and is the Director of the Texas Storytelling 25th Anniversary Festival.

Mary Grace Ketner From Ali Baba to La Llorona, Tiger to Turtle or Vasalisa to Jack, folktales, fairy tales and legends from all around the world come alive in the enchanting voice and graceful gestures of storyteller Mary Grace Ketner. Her interactive story programs address the scope and sequence of each grade’s Social Studies content as well as the TEKS for language arts. Mary Grace is part of the Texas Commission on the Arts Touring Artist Roster; support may be available through the Cultural Connections Performance Support grant application. Find her CD and learn more about her Tales and Legends. 

Mary Grace has worked as a middle and high school teacher, a director of religious education, and a museum educational specialist at UTSA’s Institute of Texan Cultures. Co-founder of the San Antonio Storytellers Association in 1991, she has served as the organization’s president or in some board position each years since. She has served on the Tejas Storytelling Association Board of Directors, produced five of the organization’s biennial Conferences since 1997, and organized registration for the Texas Storytelling Festival for four years. Active in the National Storytelling Network, she has presented two workshops and performed in story concerts a half dozen times at that organization’s annual conference. She presently serves as NSN’s State Liaison for Texas. She blogs at FairyTaleLobby.wordpress.com. 

An Air Force Brat who grew up all over the world, Sue wound up in San Antonio where she taught elementary school for 32 years. A frequent presenter of workshops on integrating the TEKS and storytelling into writing, reading, and theater arts, Sue excites young audiences to love and appreciate traditional folktales and fairy tales. She founded and continues to work with elementary storytelling clubs where five of her students have been selected to perform at the National Youth Storytelling Showcase. In 1999, she was on the founding committee of the Texas Storytelling Youth Challenge and became lead organizer of this almost annual “gentle competition” for 15 years. Sue was NEISD’s Teacher of the Year in 2010, and she received the prestigious H-E-B Lifetime Excellence in Teaching award in 2011. She has been an emcee, storyteller, workshop presenter and a featured storyteller at the Texas Storytelling Festival. In 2015, the library at Tuscany Heights Elementary in North East ISD was named for her.

Sue’s storytelling sessions are age appropriate, utilizing participatory tales for the pre-k through 3rd grades such as folktales and personal tales. For 4th–7th graders she selects longer tales such as myths, legends, and historical tales that relate to their TEKS. After she retired in 2014, she dived right into energetic leadership as SASA’s president, took a leadership role in planning the 2014 Texas Storytelling Conference, drawing on her connections in San Antonio’s North East ISD, Harlandale ISD, and Northside ISD, and Region 20 ESC, and was quickly selected for the Texas Commission on the Arts Touring Artist Roster.

More about Sue at http://www.door2lore.com/

Jane McDaniel  Born in Limerick, Ireland, Jane moved to Texas in 1993, bringing with her a wealth of Celtic lore and story. Rollicking tales of Irish country folk, a range of great Celtic myths and romances, and stories filled with imagination, superstition and traditions passed from generation to generation, these are the tools she uses to transport adults and children alike to a wonder world on the edge of Tir na nOg: Land of Eternal Youth. A four-year national champion in Irish storytelling, she hones her skill by telling and collecting stories on Achill Island, Ireland each summer.  (210) 930 1026.

Ryan McPherson, M.A. serves as a faculty member at The University of Texas at San Antonio. He is the faculty sponsor and advisor of Storytellers at UTSA, founder of the UTSA Storyslam, founder of Bluebonnet Storytellers of New Braunfels, and former president of the San Antonio Storytellers. He is also a lifetime member of the National Storytelling Network and a member of the Tejas Storytelling Association.

He is founder of Storytelling Movement LLC, a human development company focused on professional and personal narrative coaching, strategic communication workshops, and story craft.

He can be contacted at:

storytellingmovement@gmail.com

Carolina earned a Masters Degree in Storytelling at East Tennesee State University. Since landing in San Antonio in 2014, she has sought out and organized storytelling programs for small companies of SASA Storytellers at St. P.J.s, the San Antonio Childrens Hospital, and at the Scobee Planetarium’s Lunar Extravaganza. She has collaborated with SAY Sí (Multidisciplinary Youth Arts Program) to create a production for the Muertitos Fest 2016 and developed story programs with UNAM (Universidad Nacional de Mexico), the Instituto Cultural de Mexico, and San Antonio College. She built a relationship with the Rainbow Turkish House and facilitated bringing SASA’s annual Tellabration!™ to that site. She applied for and received DCCD funding support for a program of her own in 2015, then inspired SASA to apply in 2016.

Her repertoire embraces the myths, legends and mysteries of Central and South America from Guatemala to La Patagonia, and she has not stopped telling them since she arrived in San Antonio! She has appeared at Northside ISD Story Fest, Spooky Stories at Travis Park, Spanish and French classes at Stevens High School, and SASA’s Tellabration!. She gave the Keynote address at the 2015 UTSA Storytelling Festival. She has performed at the Texas Storytelling Festival in Denton and the National Storytelling Conference in Kansas City, MO. In 2015, she toured Costa Rica with her shows in Spanish and English, The Tatu´s Night (Children Stories) and Las Animas (Latin-American spooky tales). Recently Carolina received the National Storytelling Network’s “J. J. Reneaux Emerging Artist” Award.

Visit her website: www.carolinastoryteller.com

Larry Thompson has been performing in front of audiences for 30+ years.  Whether it’s a business event, or a classroom of youngsters, Larry is at home helping the audience to laugh, learn, and let loose.

If you ask his mother, she'd say he's been performing for almost 50 years.  Larry specializes in “Full-Contact” performances – offering the audience a chance to participate in the fun.

He has told stories on mountain tops and in valleys from New Mexico to South Carolina and many large and small places in between.  He has received "Least Forgettable Performer" honors and his style caused one listener to remark, "He's not so bad!"  Larry was honored to be named a Featured Teller for the 2015 George West Storyfest.

Larry tells cowboy tales, folk tales, home grown tales, and guarantees to make you smile. With campfire tales, both chilling and not-so-chilling, his outdoor performances have been enjoyed by children and adults across the South.

Feel like you or your group wants to learn more about storytelling or maybe you want to include storytelling in your business toolkit – Larry has workshops on crafting and polishing a story, creating new material, or delivering a great performance.

Larry has recorded two compact discs with old and new favorite stories and has published several books of his own stories; his newest book is a collection of cowboy and western poetry titled “Good Jeans and Good Rhymes.” He is past president of the San Antonio Storytelling Association and is currently the President of the board of directors for the Tejas Storytelling Association.

Pat Turner is an actor, sports writer and storyteller. His specialty is Brer Rabbit tales. After winning storytelling contests in college with these stories, he took it a step farther as a professional actor by writing his one-person show A Visit with Brer Rabbit. In these stories, he blends his childhood experiences with the Brer Rabbit tales while delivering a message for children in every tale.
His other American stories include Mike Fink, Casey at the Bat and Of Mice and Men, along with Christian stories about Biblical characters. He can be reached at ptactor@yahoo.com.

Jason Winn is a militant-Buddhist-former-massage-therapist-turned-architect and has been a junior scholar of storytelling since hearing the tellers of the Arabian Nights Entertainments in the great plazas of Morocco.  A serial-revisionist, Jason hopes we can change the past in retelling the story--seeing it by the light of a different campfire.  He can be reached through his website: www.SpacePoetics.com

Richard and Judy Dockrey Young are professional storytellers at Silver Dollar City heritage theme park in Branson, Missouri. Judy has told there 32 years and Richard for 30. They have published nine books of storytelling through August House, of Atlanta, GA. They specialize in Ozark tall tales, Texas history ghost stories, scary stories, and folktales from Spain, Latin America, The British Isles, France, Germany and Native America. In addition to English, Scottish, French and German ancestry, Judy is descended from a Chickasaw great-grandmother, and Richard from a Seneca great-grandmother. www.yawp.com/stories