A Personal View on Meeting the Featured Tellers at the Florida Storytelling Festival

By Walt Belcher

Brought together by COVID and Zoom, the monthly meetings of the Doc Moore Storytelling Guild is a fun event that I discovered last year, and one that I love to attend.

Professional storyteller and author Tim Tingle is the welcoming host to this story swap, named in honor of the late beloved Texas storyteller Joe “Doc” Moore who passed away in 2017.

Tim and Doc Moore authored books together (“Texas Ghost Stories”, “Fifty Favorites for the Telling”, “Spooky Texas Tales”, and “More Spooky Texas Tales”).  Tim is the author of more than 20 books.

There are a lot of laughs and good times shared at the monthly Zoom gatherings – as well as stories.  So I’m excited to meet, see and hear Tim in person at the Florida Storytelling Festival coming up in a few weeks.

Maybe he will lead us in the Choctaw National Anthem which he sings at the close of the Zoom story swaps.  You may not know the words, but the melody is from an old Christian hymn.

Tingle, who grew up in Texas, is an Oklahoma Choctaw. His great-great grandfather, John Carnes, walked the Trail of Tears in 1835, and his paternal grandmother attended Native American boarding schools in the early 1900s.

 To preserve the legacy of the Choctaw culture, Tim’s family shared stories of their heritage and the struggles that Native Americans face.

A graduate of the University of Texas, he earned a master’s degree in English Literature (with a focus in Native American Studies) from the University of Oklahoma in 2003.

A featured storyteller at festivals across the nation, he often performs at the Texas Storytelling Festival, He has been featured at the National Storytelling Festival. Tingle’s first book, “Walking the Choctaw Road”, was recognized by Storytelling World Magazine as the Best Anthology of 2003.

Of course, I’m excited to meet all the tellers at this year’s Florida Festival, including the renowned Connie Regan-Blake (see the August blog on this site about Connie’s Ray Hicks tribute).

And we will welcome two wonderful Florida tellers in Mary Lou Williams (see a November blog on this site about her fractured fairy tales) and Chris Kastle, an award-winning storyteller, songsmith, and author. I’ve had the pleasure of seeing and hearing Mary Lou and Chris.

All the featured tellers are profiled on this website.

If you haven’t got your tickets yet, get them as soon as you can.  This promises to be another memorable festival.