Braden Grant Information Session

Tuesday, January 21
5:00 – 7:00 p.m.
Hume Center Lounge (Building 250)
Dinner provided!

Do you want to travel and tell a story about it?

Apply to the Braden Grant program!

Learn more about this exciting, one-of-a-kind program at our upcoming information session.

On Tuesday, January 21, join the Stanford Storytelling Project and recent Braden Grant recipients to learn more about the Braden Grant and hear excerpts from the podcasts produced by the 2019 cohort. We’ll serve dinner, review the application process, and answer your questions.

The Braden Storytelling Grant is a grant for students to learn to research, craft, and produce an audio documentary based on oral history archives or interviews conducted by the student. This is an opportunity to tell the story of a city, neighborhood, country, culture, music scene, history (of a song, a building, a book, an artwork, etc.), cuisine, political or protest movement or those involved in them . . . really anything outside of yourself. Your final project will be a well-crafted narrative told through the medium of podcasting. The grant awards up to $2,500 and offers one-on-one mentorship for the duration of the grant.

Applications are live now and are due by noon on Saturday, February 23.

Visit the Braden Grant website to learn more about the application process and apply. Listen to the 2019 Braden Grant podcasts here.

A StoryLab appointment is a requirement of the application process. Make your appointment online here.


Materializing Listening Party

Friday, December 6
3:00 p.m.
Wallenberg 127 (Building 160)

The Stanford Storytelling Project presents Materializing, a new podcast episode of State of the Human.

What ideas exist behind material objects? In this episode, we’re going to look at stuff—things we can see or hear or touch—to try to understand the intangible, like memory, history, and bias. Join us for snacks and a curated listening party!


National Novel Writing Month at the Storytelling Project

November 1-30, 2019
Green Library

Writing Sprint
Tuesday, November 19, 2019
7-8 p.m.
Hume Center Lounge (Building 250)

November is National Novel Writing Month! The Stanford Storytelling Project has teamed up with Stanford Libraries to offer novel writers a supportive space during #NaNoWriMo, running for the entire month of November. Stop by the special NaNoWriMo table in Green Library all month for writing inspiration, treats, stickers, and more.

Join us on Tuesday, November 19 for a special writing sprint at the Hume Center Lounge. Work on your novel with other novel writers and enjoy sweet treats and tea, too.


Harriet Lunch and Film Screening

Thursday, November 7
12-1:30 pm at the BCSC Community Room
6-9 pm at the CineArts Palo Alto

Join us for two special events celebrating Black storytelling and activism with special guest TV/Film Producer Debra Martin Chase, producer of Harriet: The Lunchtime Q&A and the FREE screening of Harriet, followed by a Q&A with the producer. Based on the thrilling and inspirational life of an iconic American freedom fighter, HARRIET tells the extraordinary tale of Harriet Tubman’s escape from slavery and transformation into one of America’s greatest heroes. Her courage, ingenuity, and tenacity freed hundreds of enslaved peoples and changed the course of history. RSVP and SUID are required for entry to the Lunchtime Q&A. Tickets for the film screening will be distributed on the shuttle bus of at the movie theater if using alternative transportation. These events are jointly sponsored by Stanford Arts, the Institute for Diversity in the Arts (IDA), Program in African and African American Studies, Stanford Storytelling Project, and the Black Community Services Center.


First Open Meeting of the Year

Tuesday, October 1
6:00-7:30 p.m.
Hume Center Lounge (Building 250)

Learn about the Stanford Storytelling Project at the first Open Meeting of the year

Want to learn more about how you can get involved with the Stanford Storytelling Project? Join us at our first Open Meeting of the year. Learn about our podcasts, grants, courses, events, and more! Dinner is provided.


Story Exchange

Tuesday, June 4, 2019
6:00 – 8:30 pm
Branner Dorm
RSVP at bit.ly/stanfordstoryexchange

Story Exchange is an interactive and immersive storytelling workshop to empower students and staff looking to deepen their relationships and contribute to more empathetic community in and around campus. We’ll acquire storytelling tools to engage more authentically and feel more centered in our lives. Learn how to bring these perspectives back to your campus communities to nurture deep human capacities like empathy. Free dinner will be provided.

These workshops are hosted by the Stanford Storytelling Project, the Lifeworks Program for Integrative Learning, and Narrative 4.


The Living Odyssey: An Evening with Madeline Miller and Martin Shaw

Tuesday, May 7, 2019

7:30 pm

Cemex Auditorium

Stanford University

Free and open to the public. Tickets Required. 

Visit http://bit.ly/livingodyssey for tickets.

Join us for a special, immersive event as storyteller Martin Shaw and author Madeline Miller join forces to imagine us into one of our most powerful and enduring myths. Experience an Odyssey up close, brought to startling life by readings, tellings, and conversation about how it speaks to us today, on our own wine-dark sea, searching for an Ithaca to return home to.

Martin Shaw, PhD is a storyteller and author. As well as writing the award winning Mythteller trilogy, this year brings the release of both The Night Wages and Courting the Dawn: Poems of Lorca. He has worked with thousands of men and women exploring the relationship between ancient myth and modern life. “A true master. Martin Shaw is one of the very greatest storytellers we have.” – Robert Bly

Madeline Miller is the author of the New York Times bestseller Circe, a story of the Odyssey’s most famous witch. She is also author of the bestseller The Song of Achilles, which was awarded the 2012 Orange Prize for Fiction and has been translated into twenty-five languages. Her essays have appeared in The Guardians, Wall Street Journal, Lapham’s Quarterly and NPR.org.


Living Well: Joy, Suffering, and the Pursuit of Wholeness

Wednesday, May 15 

7:00 pm

Crown 290

Stanford Law School

Free and open to the public.

When faced with illness and suffering, can we retain a sense of meaning and flourishing? Or is our wholeness dependent on our health, our bodies, our fragile and fallible physiologies? On May 15, 2019, Veritas @ Stanford will explore these questions with Drs. Ray Barfield and BJ Miller, two physicians shaping our understanding of wholeness and meaning in the face of profound suffering. Ray Barfield is a pediatric oncologist at Duke University, director of Duke’s pediatric palliative care program, and professor of Christian philosophy at Duke Divinity School. BJ Miller is a palliative care physician at UCSF, senior director and former executive director of Zen Hospice Project, a triple-amputee, and a leading figure on death, dying, and end-of-life care. Lucy Kalanithi — Clinical Assistant Professor of Medicine at Stanford; widow of Paul Kalanithi, author of When Breath Becomes Air — will moderate the discussion. Together, these three will guide the Stanford community through complex questions of human brokenness, and in doing so, help us better understand what it means to be whole.


Salt in My Soul

Thursday, May 16

5 PM – 7 PM

Stanford Bookstore

Free and open to the public

Join us on Thursday, May 16, for an event with Diane Shader Smith featuring the book “Salt in My Soul: An Unfinished Life” by Mallory Smith.

Mallory Smith, who grew up in Los Angeles, was a freelance writer and editor specializing in environmental issues, social justice, and healthcare-related communications. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Stanford University and worked as a senior producer at Green Grid Radio, an environmental storytelling radio show and podcast. She was a fierce advocate for those who suffered from cystic fibrosis, launching the viral social media campaign Lunges4Lungs with friends and raising over $5 million with her parents for CF research through the annual Mallory’s Garden event.

For more than ten years, Mallory recorded her thoughts and observations about struggles and feelings too personal to share during her life, leaving instructions for her mother to publish her work posthumously. After her death at age 25, Mallory’s mother Diane Shader Smith, honored her daughter’s wish with the completion of Mallory’s memoir, “Salt in My Soul: An Unfinished Life.”