In the coming days before our annual Storytelling Festival in Mt. Dora, we are profiling our featured tellers. This blog focuses on Andy Hedges, Jessica Piscitelli Robinson, and Alton Chung.
A subsequent blog will profile our Florida tellers: Robin Schulte and Mitchell O’Rear. Come meet them at the festival Jan. 26 -29 at the Lakeside Inn.
Andy Hedges
Coming all the way from Texas, Andy Hedges is a singer, storyteller, guitarist, and collector of cowboy songs and poems.
In May of 2022, Andy was an artist-in-residence at the International Storytelling Center in Jonesborough. He has spent much of his adult life celebrating and documenting cowboy poets as well as creating his own works. His work carries on the tradition of stories, song and poems around the campfire.
We look forward to hearing his selections of stories, spoken word poems and music. Born in Lubbock, Texas in 1980, he is the son of a schoolteacher and a preacher who was a former bull rider at rodeos.
Andy discovered traditional Western music by listening to his father’s cassettes of cowboy songs. His repertoire includes classic cowboy poetry recitations, obscure cowboy songs, dust bowl ballads, and blues.
He also hosts a podcast, Cowboy Crossroads, which features in-depth interviews with fellow musicians and poets.
Andy has performed many times with folk legend Ramblin’ Jack Elliott and the duo’s performance at the 60th Newport Folk Festival was named one of the “10 Best Things We Saw” by Rolling Stone.
Learn more about Andy at https://andyhedges.com
Jessica Piscitelli Robinson
Jessica, a writer, storyteller and video producer, has been performing her stories before audiences since 2007.
In 2011 she launched Better Said Than Done, a storytelling troupe that found success in Virginia and now has a nationwide following thanks to Zoom.
Her fourth annual Women’s Storytelling Festival is set for March live and in-person in Fairfax, VA and also virtually online.
She has told her stories at numerous venues and was an emcee for the Florida Storytelling Association’s virtual festival in 2021.
Jessica’s short stories have been published in the anthology “Sucker for Love, the anthology Roar: True Tales of Women Warriors” – which won Honors in the 2019 Storytelling World Awards – as well as The Northern Virginia Review.
She is the author of the urban fantasy novel “Caged,” published in 2016 under the pen name J.P. Robinson. Jessica also has been leading storytelling workshops since 2011.
Jessica also runs Capture Video, Inc., a video production company, and has been a regular commentator on WAMU, Washington, DC’s NPR station.
For more information check out Better Said Than Done | Because Life is Better in the Telling
Alton Chung
Alton Chung has said that the first time he spoke in front of an audience in a high school debate, he was so nervous that he broke out in hives.
He overcame those nerves years ago to become one of the most elegant and dynamic storytellers.
Growing up in Hawaii, he learned about the stories and superstitions of the islands and gained respect for the beliefs of different cultures. As a performer, Alton tells Asian folk tales and Hawaiian legends with respect and authenticity. Alton also collects, researches, and shares strange tales which range from the mildly mysterious to those in which the shadows talk back.
Alton also tells stories of the Hawaiian monarchy from the reign of Kamehameha, the Great through Queen Liliuokalani and the annexation of the islands by the United States as well as stories from the 1930’s and 40’s during the plantation era in Hawaii. And he has stories about the Japanese-American experience before, during, and after WWII.
In 2005, Alton was awarded the first J.J. Reneaux Emerging Artist Award by the National Storytelling Network. He has performed at the Congress of Asian Storytellers in Singapore, the International Gimme Story Storytelling Festival in the Cayman Islands, as well as venues in India, China, and Okinawa.
He has also performed at the Talk Story Festival, the Bay Area Storytelling Festival, the Four Corners Storytelling Festival, the Oklahoma City Storytelling Festival, and has been a New Voice Teller at the National Storytelling Festival.
Learn more at Alton Chung – Official Site