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Welcome to
Healing Story Alliance
OARS in the Water
Wednesday, April 23rd
7:00pm-8:30pm EDT
Hosted by Heather Forest & Nyanna Tobin
Theme: Generosity
Join us as we explore the many facets of generosity and celebrate the joys of giving and receiving.
“All flourishing is mutual” -Robin Wall Kimmerer, author & environmentalist
OARS in the Water is a facilitated Zoom gathering that meets on the second and fourth Wednesday of the month at 7 pm Eastern Time. The Healing Story Alliance’s OARS in the Water offers a community listening space in which to share the experiences and stories that have emerged in turbulent times. OARS co-hosts facilitate the evening and provide participants with a warm welcome and a meaningful theme, which we hope will be healing, supportive and inspiring.
Format: A typical 90-minute meeting consists of a 20-minute, theme-based opening, followed by 20 minutes in breakout rooms, and then we reassemble for a whole group conversation.
Admission is free, although donations are deeply appreciated and help support our programming. Your tax deductible donation can be made here:
https://square.link/u/d9xbGN2I
WE HAVE A NEW ZOOM LINK TO BOOKMARK:
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/81580670118?pwd=kluogEmpqp8COl7mWvvDl673CCozLS.1
About our Hosts for April 23rd
Nyanna Susan Tobin is a seasoned storyteller. She always loved a good yarn or mystery. However after losing a daughter in childbirth, friend and storyteller, Maggie Pierce, shared a healing story over the phone. In her lilting Irish voice, she told Nyanna of a story she was given the previous night that was certainly meant for her ears. One small story, told with powerful love, inspired Nyanna to learn the art of oral tradition. One story led to another while she journeyed to find her own Story Magic. Today, she bookmarks short stories with small tunes and weaves with string on round hoops she bends from green branches. Nyanna steadfastly continues her practices of oral and gifting traditions. Her signature tale, “The Hermit and the Children” was published in “Spinning Tales, Weaving Hope,” 1992. Her sacred weavings, Hoops of Hope, dance in many windows worldwide.
Heather Forest, PhD, is an award-winning storyteller, author, musician, and organic farmer. A pioneer in the American storytelling renaissance, she has appeared in theatres, schools, literature conferences, and major storytelling festivals throughout the United States and abroad. She is the author of seventeen children’s books and recordings based on multicultural folktales. A modern-day bard, her dynamic fusion of original music, poetry, and the sung and spoken word brings multicultural folktales to life in the imagination of her listeners. She is President of the Board of Healing Story Alliance, Inc. She views storytelling as both a fine art and a powerful tool for positive social change.
KIND STORIES IN CONCERT
May 4th
7-8:30 pm EDT
Register here to Receive a FREE Kind Stories in Concert Zoom Link:
https://www.simpletix.com/e/kind-stories-in-concert-may-4-2025-tickets-212317
Featured Tellers
Sufian Zhemukhov is an award-winning author and performer. His solo shows have been featured in the 2023 Teller in Residence season, off-Broadway, and nationwide. NPR presented his show Flirting Like an American is a show about romance, culture, and one immigrant’s story. An international affairs scholar by day, Sufian draws from his personal experience as a first-generation immigrant and political analyst, which might be funnier than it sounds. His storytelling endeavors received the 2020 JJ Reneaux Emerging Artist Award from the National Storytelling Network, and his academic research won the 2019 Best Book Award from the International Studies Association.
Cheryl Hamilton is devoted to advancing inclusive communities and storytelling. After twenty years in the nonprofit sector serving immigrants and refugees, she founded Stellar Story Company. The woman-owned business helps people and institutions deliver extraordinary stories and unforgettable events for meaningful change. She is also the creator of the Suitcase Stories® series and former director of curation and coaching for the award-winning national media program Stories from the Stage. Hamilton has coached over 1,500 storytellers from 85 countries.
Jasmin Cardenas is a Colombian-American award-winning bilingual storyteller, Theater maker, Actress, Educator and Social Activist. Jasmin Cardenas is a theater maker who uses teatro and play to create spaces where people can connect, tell their story and spark change. A proud daughter of Colombian immigrants, Jasmin was inspired by El Teatro Campesino when she began using Theater of the Oppressed to devise original scenes with working people in the fight for workers’ rights. Learning T.O. with Augusto Boal dramatically altered the course of Jasmin’s life and she will be forever grateful. Together with Chicago’s working people she co-founded WorkersTEATRO in Chicago, IL to amplify wage worker stories by engaging the public. Recognized for her arts & civic engagement work she was awarded a 2020-2022 international LAB Fellowship by The Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics at Georgetown University. She most enjoys discovering new places, ideally by bicycle.
Emcee
Denise Manning Keyes Page began storytelling when a dear friend in her last months of living with ALS urged her to do so. Denise excavated a story she had written about her mother’s family, edited it so that it was an appropriate oral story and shared it at a community story event. She did so to honor two people she loved. Her mother and her friend. Her mother was deceased at the time, but her friend delighted in the feedback she heard. Ms. Page is convinced this entry into the art of storytelling ignited a passion within her because it began in so much love. She had no intention of telling again. But she has. That was 2019. She tells stories to heal, challenge, inspire, inform and connect.
Community Teller
Nazia Jamal is a resident of Boston who has recently fallen in love with storytelling. Nazia resettled to the United States in January 2024 after the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan, where she worked as a teacher, inspiring young women to pursue education. Today, Nazia teaches full-time in a language school and speaks as often as possible with her students and family back in Afghanistan.
NEWS! The Book upon which this concert is based has won a Storytelling World Award!
ABOUT the Healing Story Alliance Website
This website offers resources, guidance and practical applications for storytelling, revealing and reflecting the many facets of healing story in the world today and in the past. In addition to bibliographies, and links, there is a library of articles on Healing Stories and Storytelling. Our acclaimed Journal, Diving in the Moon: Honoring Story, Facilitating Healing, is available from 2013-2017 as an e-journal on the HSA website.
All authored writing on the Healing Story Alliance website is the copyrighted property of its author. These resources are intended for not-for-profit educational use. Any commercial use of resources on this website must be arranged directly with the author of the text or video.
Many are drawn to our site in search of answers or resources for dealing with the pain and tragedy of turbulent current events in the personal, social and global realms. This interest is addressed in our compilations of stories which we encourage you to explore.
- Healing Treasures: Stories intended to precipitate conversation, and guide teaching and healing with participants.
- Stories We Live: Personal stories and methods for gathering and applying life experiences as healing references.
- Stories for Children in Crisis: Compiled by Laura Simms, includes stories, articles, and links, drawn from years of research and professional work with children.
- Stories for Peace: storytelling in pursuit of peace and understanding.
- Healing the Earth: featuring stories contributed by storytellers working in environmental settings or on educational projects with an environmental theme.
HSA was a long standing Special Interest Group of the National Storytelling Network. In 2022 it became fiscally sponsored by Story Arts Inc, a NY state 501(c)(3) arts organization dedicated to the fine art of storytelling and to its educational applications. Story Arts is directed by Heather Forest. As a subsidiary project of Story Arts Inc., HSA functioned as a not-for-profit arts organization under Story Arts Inc.’s fiscal umbrella while establishing it’s own not-for-profit organization in New York State. In January 2023 HSA Inc. received IRS recognition as an independent 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization. Healing Story Alliance Inc is now an NSN Collaborative Partner.