Thursday, February 13, 2014
8:00 – 10:00 pm
Old Stone House – Washington Park – Park Slope, Brooklyn
336 Third Street, b/t 4th & 5th Avenues
718.768.3195
info@theoldstonehouse.org
Brooklyn Reading Works presents The Authored Voice: Storytelling Across Lives and Media, an evening of stories and conversation with Murray Nossel, Catherine Burns, Trisha Coburn, and Edgar Oliver, moderated by John Guidry. These award-winning panelists will talk about the various media they have used to tell stories—performance, film, books, videos—and the different ways they cultivate voice for themselves and others. We will explore how storytelling is cathartic, empowering, entertaining … and sometimes a pretty good business. Join us at the Old Stone House in Park Slope on February 13, 2014, at 8:00 pm. A $5 donation at the door is appreciated to defray costs of wine and refreshments at the event.
The Panelists
MURRAY NOSSEL is co-founder of Narativ with Paul Browde, a company that has developed a storytelling methodology based on Murray and Paul’s stage performance, Two Men Talking. The performance began as an improvised telling of the story of their friendship, from their school days in South Africa to New York in the 1990s and the present. Storytelling was central to Murray’s practice as a clinician in AIDS services during the height of the epidemic, and he is also an award-winning filmmaker whose work includes Why Can’t We Be a Family Again?, A Brooklyn Family Tale, Paternal Instinct, and Turn to Me, featuring Nobel Prize–winning author Elie Wiesel. Murray holds a doctorate in Social Work from Columbia University and teaches in Columbia’s Master of Science in Narrative Medicine program.
TRISHA COBURN has worked for a number of years as a fine artist in Boston and New York. She received her BFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and Tufts University, and she is also an interior designer with De La Torre Design. Trisha’s storytelling began with a one-day workshop at Narativ and eventually led her to The Moth, presenting her story, “Miss Macy,” on tour and on The Moth Radio Hour. Trisha is currently working on a collection of short stories based on her childhood experiences growing up in Alabama. She lives in New York and has three wonderful children.
CATHERINE BURNS is The Moth’s long time Artistic Director and a frequent host of the Peabody Award-winning The Moth Radio Hour. She is the editor of the New York Times Best Seller The Moth: 50 True Stories. Prior to The Moth, she directed and produced independent films and television, interviewing such diverse talent as Ozzy Osbourne, Martha Stewart and Howard Stern. She is the director of the solo show Helen & Edgar, which opened at The Public Theater in January with the Under the Radar Festival, where it was named a pick of the festival by The New Yorker, Time Out and WNYC. Born and raised in Alabama, she now lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two year old son.
EDGAR OLIVER is a novelist, poet, and playwright who has been lauded as “a living work of theater all by himself” by Ben Brantley of The New York Times. He is a member of the Axis Theatre Company, under the direction of Randy Sharp. His one-man show East 10th Street: Self-Portrait with Empty House was the recipient of a Fringe First Award at the 2009 Edinburgh Fringe Festival. His most recent show, Helen & Edgar, directed by the Moth’s Artistic Director Catherine Burns and produced by Moth Founder George Dawes Green, did a sold-out run at The Public Theater with the Under the Radar Festival. He has published three collections of his poems—A Portrait of New York by a Wanderer There, Summer, and The Brooklyn Public Library—and a novel, The Man Who Loved Plants.
The Organizers
JOHN GUIDRY is the curator & moderator of “The Authored Voice.” John uses storytelling to amplify and strengthen the voices of individuals, organizations, and causes. He has worked in public health and community development as a researcher, consultant, and movement leader with numerous organizations around the world. His multi-media social marketing and health communications campaigns have reached millions globally, and he has published two books Engaging the Community in Decision Making and Globalizations and Social Movements. A new project, “The Pursuit—Stories of Joy, Suffering, and the American Dream” is in development now—stay tuned to Truth and Rocket Science.
LOUISE CRAWFORD is the founder of Brooklyn Social Media, a firm devoted to PR and social media for authors, artists and entrepreneurs. Since 2004, she has published the popular Brooklyn blog Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn. She is the founder of the Brooklyn Blogfest, an annual networking event for bloggers, and Brooklyn Reading Works. From 2005-2010, Louise wrote Smartmom, a weekly column for The Brooklyn Paper about parenting and modern life.
truth and rocket science 