The Story Blender

Will Storr is an award-winning writer whose work has appeared in the Guardian, Sunday Times, New Yorker, and The New York Times. He is the author of five critically acclaimed books, including the Sunday Times bestseller The Science of Storytelling. His latest release is The Status Game: On Social Position and How We Use It.

Playwright and debut novelist Jennifer Fawcett grew up in rural Eastern Ontario and spent many years in Canada making theatre before coming to the United States. She holds an MFA from the Iowa Playwrights Workshop. Her work has been published in Third Coast Magazine, Reunion: The Dallas Review, Storybrink, and in the anthology Long Story Short. She teaches writing at Skidmore College and lives in upstate New York with her husband and son.

New York Times bestselling novelist Kate Elliott has been making up stories about escape into worlds of adventure and transformative change since she was a child growing up in rural Oregon. In this conversation, we talk fantasy, world building, and her latest book SERVANT MAGE. (Plus what outrigger canoes can teach you about characterization in fantasy stories!)

Jonathan Gottschall is a distinguished research fellow in the English Department at Washington & Jefferson College and is the author of The Storytelling Animal, a New York TimesEditor's Choice and finality for the LA Times Book Prize, and The Professor in the Cage, one of the Boston Globe's Best Books of the year, as well as his latest release, The Story Paradox. He has written for or been covered in the New York Times, Scientific American, the New Yorker, the Atlantic, the Chronicle of Higher Education, and The Millions. Gottschall has also appeared on popular podcasts like Star Talk, The Joe Rogan Experience, and Radiolab. He lives in Pennsylvania.

David Novak is Artistic Director of A Telling Experience, telling stories to enrich discourse, entertain imagination, engage emotion, and discover our common ground. He has been described as a “master of literary collage” for his unique narrative style. David is an internationally touring storyteller and veteran of the National Storytelling Festival as well as a recipient of the Circle of Excellence Award from the National Storytelling Network. He keynotes for numerous library and educational conferences, including the Sydney International Storytelling Conference, Czech Children’s Theatre Festival, and American Alliance for Theatre in Education. David lives in Asheville, North Carolina.

Having grown up within a rich storytelling tradition of hearing traditional ballads and stories, Jess Montgomery found herself pursuing writing at an early age. Now, as a historical mystery author, she pens stories that feature strong female leads and deep universal themes. Listen in as she shares her thoughts about character arcs, inviting the Muse in, and the important of “not thinking about the gold.”

Tony Marr has a master’s degree in storytelling and has won numerous awards for storytelling and well, for lying, being a championship liar from the state of South Carolina numerous times. He has performed throughout the country and  consulted with many businesses on storytelling and communication.

Jeff Ayers has been a freelance writer and reviewer since 1999. He has reviewed for Library Journal, where he is a former Fiction Reviewer of the Year, for Booklist, and for The Associated Press.Jeff recently retired from his reference librarian position after almost 30 years after interviewing hundreds of authors in print, audio, and video, including James Patterson, Harlan Coben, and Dan Brown. In addition to this and moderating panels at BookExpo America, ThrillerFest, and various other conferences, he has published several titles in both fiction and nonfiction, including Voyages of Imagination: The Star Trek Fiction Companion, where he covered over 550 novels and interviewed over 350 people, including William Shatner. He currently has several manuscripts out for submission and is under contract for a nonfiction book for Grand Central Publishing.Jeff is a Co-Executive Director of ThrillerFest, the annual conference for the International Thriller Writers.

Catriona Ward was born in Washington, DC, and grew up in the United States, Kenya, Madagascar, Yemen, and Morocco. She studied English at the University of Oxford and later completed a Creative Writing Masters at the University of East Anglia. Ward is a multi-award winning horror writer who won the August Derleth Award for Best Horror Novel for her debut, Rawblood, and again for Little Eve, making her the first woman to win the prize twice. She is also the author of the highly acclaimed novel The Last House on Needless Street, which was a runaway international bestseller and is currently in development for film. In addition, her short stories have appeared in numerous anthologies. She lives in London and Devon.

A former journalist, Naomi Hirahara is an Edgar Award-winning author of numerous cozy and historical mysteries and was president of the Southern California chapter of Mystery Writers of America. Her Mas Arai series, which includes Summer of the Big Bachi, won the Chicago Tribune’s Ten Best Mysteries and Thrillers and Publisher’s Weekly’s Best Book of the Year. She is an active member of the Japanese-American community in California as well as an active member of Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, International Thriller Writers, and Crime Writers of Color!