StoryCraft

TAPS 21
2 Units
WAYS-CE
Instructors: Dan Klein and Michelle Darby

StoryCraft is a hands-on, experiential workshop offering participants the opportunity, structure and guidance to craft compelling personal stories to be shared in front of a live audience. The class will focus on several areas of storytelling: Mining (how do you find your stories and extract the richest details?); Crafting (how do you structure the content and shape the language?); and Performing (how do you share your stories with presence, authenticity and connection?).

Documentary Fictions

Documentary Fictions poster AMSTUD 176B
4 units
WAYS-CE
Instructor: Jonah Willihnganz

More and more of the best American fiction, plays, and even comics are being created out of documentary practices such as in-depth interviewing, oral histories, and reporting. Novels like Dave Eggers’s What is the What, plays like Anna Deavere Smith’s Twilight Los Angeles, and narrative journalism like Rebecca Skloot’s The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, all act as both witnesses and translators of people’s direct experience and push art into social activism in new ways. In this course students will examine the research methods, artistic craft, and ethics of these rich, genre-bending works and then create documentary fictions of their own. Readings will include works by Katherine Boo, G. B. Tran, and Charles Johnson, and author visits will include a master class with Rebecca Skloot. No prior creative writing or journalism experience required.

Sound Stories

Rainbow audio wave with Sound Stories written above

ORALCOMM 129, 4 units
Instructor: Jake Warga

This special seminar is designed for students interested in creating documentary stories for radio, podcast, and other sound media. Students will learn both the core principles of telling strong stories, whatever the medium, and the strategies of telling entertaining, persuasive stories for the ear. Just like film or the novel, sonic stories offer a fascinating mix of constraints and opportunities, and you’ll learn how to invite listeners into an experience or insight that combines theories, facts and feelings into a single space of empathy. This is a hybrid class – equal parts classic seminar and creative workshop – and students will create stories from start to finish and learn skills from pitching and interviewing to writing, editing, and digital production. Students will work in small groups to document places through the stories that inhabit them – from police departments and local shelters to and community centers. Recommended for students interested in creative nonfiction, documentary, film, and even sound art. No prior experience necessary. (Cardinal Course certified by the Haas Center)

Food, Memoir, and Narrative: The Story Only You Can Tell

Veronica Chambers poster

Tuesday, March 6, 2018
7:00 pm
Hewlett 200
Admission is free and open to all.

Veronica Chambers is a a four-time New York Times best-selling author who specializes in creativity and collaboration. In this talk, she’ll discuss her James Beard award-winning collaborations with chefs such as Marcus Samuelsson, Eric Ripert and her most recent cookbook project, Between Harlem and Heaven which she co-wrote with Harlem chefs JJ Johnson and Alexander Smalls. She’ll also talk about the Earth Systems class she is teaching at Stanford this quarter, “Environmental and Food System Journalism,” and how food writing can open the door to explorations of culture, history and identity.

Additional details and map are available on the Stanford Event Calendar.

Caretaking

How do we take care of the past after it turns to ash? We visit with families digging through the rubble of their homes in Sonoma after the fires as they sift for memories. This episode asks how we care for people, and what to do if there’s no obvious path to healing. Along the way, we meet a midwife, some worms, and a daughter caring for her mother and herself.

Host: Claudia Heymach
Producers: Claudia Heymach, Crystal Escolero, Emma Heath, Bella Lazzareschi, Helvia Taina, Sarah Jiang, Eileen Williams, Jackson Roach, Jake Warga
Featuring: Ronnie Falcoa, Claire Mollard, Josh Weil, Roshni Thachill
Show music: “The Flight of the Lulu” by Possimiste
Release date: 7 February 2018

Story 1: Midwife Crisis

We don’t always think of caretaking in a professional terms, but for a homebirth midwife, the emotional and physical wellbeing of others is the whole job.

Producer: Emma Heath
Featuring: Ronnie Falcoa

Story 2: From the Ashes

We went to Sonoma County after the fires to help residents dig through the rubble of their homes. Along the way, we asked about what they took with them, what they wanted to take, and what they’re looking for now.

Producers: Crystal Escolero, Helvia Taina, and Claudia Heymach
Featuring: Claire Mollard and Josh Weil
Image courtesy of Jake Warga

Story 3: Depression 1, 2, 3 …

Living with mental illness means living with the mysterious and mundane. Caretakers of loved ones with depression, anxiety or psychosis must come to grips with both sides, and resist the tug of their own demons in the process. This is an ongoing story about a mom, her daughter and the everyday work of love.

Producers: Sarah Jiang and Eileen Williams
Music: “Undersea Garden” and “Love Sprouts” by Podington Bear, “Tennessee Waltz” by Patti Page
Image: “San Valentin 14” by Milan Rubio

The Art of Editing with Julia Barton and Sam Greenspan

Poster with Julia Barton and Sam Greenspan

Join the Stanford Storytelling Project for a special conversation between radio veterans Julia Barton and Sam Greenspan.

Julia Barton is an award-winning radio editor, reporter, and writer. Currently, she edits Revisionist History with Malcolm Gladwell. Her reporting has aired on 99$ Invisible, Radiolab, and elsewhere.

Sam Greenspan is a visiting staffer at the Stanford Storytelling Project. Previously, he was the managing producer at 99% Invisible, where he worked on a number of stories with Julia. Sam is currently developing a new podcast, Bellwether.