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October 2015 Monthly Meeting

Before Writing: Storytelling: Four Stories by Four Storytellers
Tuesday, October 13, 2015


A panel of four regional storytellers will share their work, storytelling techniques, and the role of writing in storytelling, as well as take questions from the audience. Finn Bille will MC the program that also includes Judy Baker, Vincent Phipps, and Ray Zimmerman. Vincent told a local story of his father at the Tivoli Theater, Judy told a “Jack tale,” Ray shared the story of a bull gator, and Finn, after the panel discussion, took us back to his childhood with “When I Was Ten.”
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Finn Bille
Vincent Ivan Phipps combines humor with a genuine Southern pride, giving his stories a unique flavor of deep, fried, funny! Born and raised in Chattanooga, Vincent comes from a long line of trend setters. He weaves true stories of courage and laughter involving his family’s historical accomplishments.

Vincent has been a professional storyteller for 21 years.  His storytelling accomplishments include:
  • Spoke at the Story Swapping Circle at the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesboro, TN.
  • Won first place in the professional storytelling category at the Dogwood’s Arts Festival in Knoxville, TN.
  • Author of 6 books, including a book on original ghost stories all featuring Chattanooga called, Spookynooga.
  • Featured storyteller at the TaleSpin Storytelling Festival.
  • Trip Advisor.com rated Vincent (Chattanooga Ghost Tours) as one of the Top 10 ghost storytelling tour guides in America.

Vincent feels that storytelling is one of the purest forms of verbal art that encapsulates our memories and our emotions.  There are many things we can lose in life, but Vincent feels that a great story, told well, can last a lifetime!
Judy Baker
Judy Baker
Ray Zimmerman is the senior editor of the anthology Southern Light: Twelve Contemporary Southern Poets, and author of the poetry chapbook First Days. His poetry, nonfiction, and photography have appeared in regional and national publications. He has appeared as a storyteller and a performance poet at numerous Chattanooga area events. He is particularly pleased that his poem “Glen Falls Trail” received an award from the Tennessee Writers Alliance and appeared in The Southern Poetry Anthology: Volume VI, Tennessee (University of Texas Press).

Finn Bille has told stories since the 1980s when he taught English in Denmark. Since retiring from teaching and consulting, he has performed at many festivals and local venues in Tennessee, Georgia and Alabama, including many events produced by The Southern Order of Storytellers. Locally, Finn has recently performed at River City Sessions. At an annual conference of Tennessee Mountain Writers, he performed his “Recycled Poetry,” and he performed his original one-hour story, “From Bacon Fat to Peanut Butter: An Immigrant’s Tale” at the 2013 conference of the National Storytelling Network. 
CD: Marzipan: Stories with Music.
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Vincent Ivan Phipps
Growing up in a town with only one piano teacher made it hard for Judy Baker to learn to play the piano, never mind the fact that there was no piano in the house. But Judy found her voice, not through music but through story. She loves sharing her Southern Appalachian heritage through an eclectic variety of stories from folk tales to traditional Appalachian tales to stories about growing up Southern, and tales about things that go bump in the night. She has told her tales, tall and short, folk, traditional, and personal, in local and regional venues and festivals including the Cumberland Mountain Storytelling Festival, Storytelling Festival of Carolina, and Charleston's Cow Pea Festival.  

She is a proud mom to two grown sons, two daughters-in-love, and Mimi to twin grandchildren with a third on the way. She is married to the love of her life, and the only boy she ever dated, who says he is just trying to keep out of her stories! She can be reached at tellone@bellsouth.net or online at www.tellyouastory.com.
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Ray Zimmerman
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