Healing Story Alliance is a not-for-profit, educational, arts organization which provides online resources and concert, workshop, and community programming in support of storytelling as a healing art.
Description
‘Kindness is having the ability to speak with love,
listen with patience, and act with compassion.”
-Random Acts of Kindness Foundation
Join the Healing Story Alliance for a special gathering to share and explore stories of kindness in its many faces and forms. The kindness of justice is deeply satisfying. We all deserve to be treated with respect and to have our needs heard and responded to. Since resources and power are so unequally distributed in this world, it is vital for those who can to stand up for those in need. Hearing the stories of justice in action gives us courage and inspiration in these times.
Featured Tellers
Nick Smith started learning folktales when stuck at home during a childhood illness. He didn't start telling them to anyone else until adulthood, as part of his job at a library. Since then, he has told stories in an odd variety of places, including a Victorian parlor, a mausoleum, a former city hall and a horse race track. Luckily, the horses weren't running at the time.
Anabelle Castaño is a bilingual storyteller, archaeologist and museum educator from Buenos Aires, Argentina. She interweaves her three professions and works on building bridges between material and immaterial culture through traditional stories from all continents. Currently she's part of the storytelling committee for the Buenos Aires International Book Fair -which has hosted a storytellers' international meeting for 27 years- and a member of FEAST. You can find her online telling folktales, offering workshops on storytelling, online resources, repertoire and oral traditions and developing content for various projects. www.anacas.com.ar
Sue O’Halloran has performed her original stories nationally and internationally at such festivals as The National Storytelling Festival and The Timpanogos Storytelling Festival and has led thousands of seminars in corporate and nonprofit settings on the power of storytelling for workforce engagement, inclusion, and connections. Sue is the author of several noted books and is a recipient of both the National Storytelling Network’s Leadership and Circle of Excellence awards. Her Racebridges website showcased 260 social justice video stories and received over half a million visitors each year. Her ten-year JustStories Storytelling Festival featured the untold stories of marginalized and accomplished communities. www.SusanOHalloran.com
Community Tellers
Alana Shapiro is a student studying Environmental and Sustainability Sciences and Computer Science at Northeastern. For her co-op, she worked at the Food Project in Roxbury, helping to support their efforts to bring healthy, affordable produce to lower-income communities. There she would work on the farm, run farmers markets, and administer some of their food justice programs. She is currently volunteering with the Massachusetts Sierra Club on their legislative team and supports their efforts to pass legislative priorities through campaigning, tabling, and lobbying events. <shapiro.a@northeastern.edu
Ella Reznikova, originally from Ukraine, lives in Vermont and practices Buddhism. She is an interpreter and a freelance author who has been published. The moment Russia invaded Ukraine, she organized the Compassion for Ukraine Tonglen zoom group that has met daily for over two years. Ella works with Ukrainian volunteers fundraising for numerous needs. https://sites.google.com/view/ukraine-tonglen/home
Emcee
Jo Radner is a Folklorist, storyteller, writer, and oral historian who creates personal tales and stories about the people of northern New England. She is past president of the American Folklore Society and the National Storytelling Network and serves on the Advisory Board of the journal Storytelling, Self, Society. A Harvard Ph.D. and former professor at American University, she has been studying, teaching, telling, and collecting stories most of her life. She lives in Lovell, Maine, and can be reached at jradner@american.edu
Date & Time
Sun, Dec 7, 2025 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM