About Us

For nearly 20 years, people of the Pacific Northwest have been listening to stories

through the Portland Storytellers Guild. We're proud of that and we want you to be a part of our commitment to the spoken word. After all,  storytelling has been a vital part of human life
as far back in history as anyone can imagine,
but it may never be more useful or necessary than it is today, because stories tell us who we are.  That has always been true, but when the pace of change accelerates absurdly and our definition of “community” seems to change with every headline, then stories can provide invaluable guidance.

As storytellers, part of our work involves taking

 Audience at a Kennedy Schoo; Telling

materials that have been preserved in print and restoring, reviving, and regenerating the tremendous power they possessed before they were tamed, allowing the music of the words to come back to life. With voice, we repopulate them with life energy.  With movement, we repopulate them with kinesthetic energy.  We set stories in motion.

Of course, that’s not all Guild storytellers are about, for we also provide stories of our own creation and whimsy and doggerel and sometimes tales designed to bend and fold the imagination in brand new directions.  But all of it serves the tradition of the spoken word.

Wade Davis, anthropologist and explorer-in-residence at the National Geographic Society, recently wrote that, of the 6,000 languages now being spoken in the world, half are not being taught to children and so will soon be lost.  In Davis’s words, “At risk is a vast archive of knowledge, a catalogue of the imagination containing the memories of countless elders and healers, warriors, farmers, fishermen, midwives, poets, and saints.  In short, the artistic, intellectual, and spiritual expression of the full diversity of the human experience.”  What the Guild can do, and has done for more than 20 years, is play a part by honoring the pieces of that legacy that speak to us and through us. 

Please check the calendar and be a part of one of our first Friday storyswaps, or a Family Entertainment Saturday performance at the Kennedy School Community Room, or even a Saturday afternoon performance at A Children's Place.  

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