Thursday, November 21, 2024, 5:00 – 6:00 pm/ PST
Holiday Storytelling Fest – FREE Virtual Event!
True Stories of Grace and Gratitude
All are welcome to the WNBA-SF Chapter’s virtual storytelling fest to celebrate the holidays as only book women writers can! Five brilliant, talented writers will share their personal stories of grace and gratitude to bring us cheer during this wonderful season of thanksgiving and joy.
After our five presenters tell their true stories, we’ll open it up to our virtual audience—that’s you! We want to encourage the sharing of stories during the holidays with friends and family in the spirit of deep gratitude this year.
Celebrate with us in sharing joy and gratitude with stories for the holidays. Bring a glass of wine or cup of tea and gather ‘round our virtual fire. Bring a friend!
Storytellers:
Karen Wang Diggs, Storyteller – “A Death, A Dream, A Continuance” An Autumn Day on Mount Koya
Kate Farrell, Emcee and Storyteller —“The Shoemaker’s Apprentice” A Holiday Miracle and Family Legend, Bavaria, Germany
Mary Mackey, Storyteller — “Brazil’s Best Taxi Driver” Burning palm trees? Machine gun fire? Riots? Relax. João will get you to the airport on time.
Ellen McBarnette, Storyteller — “Ghosts of Fifth Avenue” Holiday memories come when they come.
Sheila Smith McKoy, Storyteller — “That Last Christmas”
BIOS
Karen Wang Diggs is a chef and nutritionist by day and a history hound and writer by night. She is passionate about sharing the injustices faced by women throughout history, with the aim of empowering girls and women today to change the future by striving for absolute gender equality. Her work is dedicated to sharing those lesser-told stories to show the world that strong females always have been and always will be crucial to humanity’s progress.
Currently, Karen is finishing The Book of Awesome Asian Women, which will be released in March of 2025 (just in time for Women’s History Month) by Mango Publishing.
Kate Farrell, storyteller, author, librarian, founded the Word Weaving Storytelling Project and published numerous educational materials on storytelling. She has contributed to and edited award-winning anthologies of personal narrative. Farrell’s award-winning recent book is a how-to guide on the art of storytelling, Story Power: Secrets to Creating, Crafting, and Telling Memorable Stories; she offers workshops on storytelling for groups live and online. Kate is the founder of Woven: Telling the Heroine’s Journey based on her work with storytelling and as an educator-librarian; she shares her process in workshops and on Substack. http://katefarrell.net/ https://woventales.net/
Mary Mackey became a writer by running high fevers, tramping through tropical jungles, being swarmed by army ants, dodging machinegun fire, and reading. She is the New York Times bestselling author of 14 novels including The Year The Horses Came, which describes how the peaceful goddess-worshiping people of Prehistoric Europe fought off patriarchal invaders. She is also the author of three prize-winning screenplays and 8 poetry collections, including Sugar Zone, winner of a PEN Award, and The Jaguars That Prowl Our Dreams, winner of a 2019 Eric Hoffer Award for Best Book Published by a Small Press. Visit her website at https://marymackey.com
Ellen McBarnette is an award-winning writer/storyteller and had her earliest tales transcribed by her mother when she was a toddler. An active participant in the San Francisco literary community, Ellen has led the Afrosurreal Writers Workshop of Oakland for five years. Her novella, “Negrita” is in Midnight and Indigo Speculative Fiction Volume II. She lives in Hayward with her partner Ben and their cat Java.
Sheila Smith McKoy, PHD is an award-winning poet, fiction writer, and filmmaker. She is the recipient of the 2020 Muriel Craft Bailey Memorial Prize in poetry. Her poetry collections include The Bones Beneath (Black Lawrence Press, 2024) One Window’s Light: A Haiku Collection, a collaboration of five Black poets; the collection won the 2017 Haiku Society of America’s Merit Book Award for best haiku anthology. In addition to her poetry and fiction, Smith McKoy has authored and edited numerous scholarly works. She focuses on vital conversations about equity, inclusion and the Black speculative. A native of Raleigh, NC, she lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.
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