StoryFest is a Minnesota storytelling festival, organized by Story Arts of Minnesota. It is an annual state-wide spring festival that features local, regional, and national tellers who teach and perform the storytelling arts. This year, StoryFest 2026 took place on Saturday, April 4th, its 15th year, and the 4th year hosted by the Bloomington Center for the Arts. Story Arts of Minnesota “imagines a society in which storytellers are recognized for their ability to provide a relevant, inspiring and transformative service to individuals and the community through the art and craft of spoken narrative.”
In general, storytelling festivals are an opportunity to celebrate storytelling and introduce the art form to the general public. There are workshops to teach new and experienced storytellers craft, an abundance of performances for adults or families, and open mics for the storytelling curious to take their first step onto the stage. The festival is a good chance to see old friends and introduce new ones to this ubiquitous, invisible, and highly misunderstood art form.
I have represented AMSS at StoryFest since we opened in 2023. We host one of the information tables, available to chat with attendees and accidental visitors who are at the Bloomington Center for the Arts for other reasons and ask, “What is this?” I had the same question myself over ten years ago when a friend first told me I needed to be on stage performing stories. The most common comments I hear at our table are “I’ve never heard of you (AMSS) before!” or “I would never set foot in that neighborhood!” Sigh. It’s Lowry Hill, on the edge of the most expensive neighborhood in Minneapolis…
I performed a story this year for the first time at StoryFest in an afternoon concert. It was the same one I performed in Grand Rapids, MN last September. I’ve been so busy working on my career and managing and promoting AMSS that I was preparing for the performance on a walk at lunch… It went well as it was already a developed personal story. Loren taught the workshop, “Storytelling as Personal Mythology” which we are offering as a four-session online class in May, hint hint.
Last month, I wrote about our visit to the Texas Storytelling Festival. As luck would have it, the National Storytelling Network’s conference is also in Texas this year- Canyon, Texas at West Texas A&M University, July 23-26, 2026. Boy howdy, that’s going to be a hot one! Again, there will be national tellers, workshops, and performances.
So what’s the difference between a festival and a conference? Audience. While festivals do have educational workshops for tellers, the main focus of a festival is celebration, performance, and invitation to the general public to experience the festival. And while conferences do have performances open to the general public, the main focus is on education and networking for storytellers. We will be attending- and learning and sweating- representing both our organization and the Minnesota storytelling community.
While AMSS is primarily a teaching and performance storytelling venue, we also support poetry. As I write this, I am in Ely, MN at the League of Minnesota Poets (LOMP) spring conference (April 10-12, 2026)! The view from my room is a spectacular winter scene of Shagawa Lake. The League of Minnesota Poets’ mission is “to make Minnesota poetry conscious, and conscious to its own poets.” LOMP offers nine regional chapters throughout the state. Each provides local events, educational meetings, open mic nights, artist-poet collaborations, and much more. They will have their fall conference on Halloween weekend this year.
I was a poet before I was a teller. Loren and I met in 2018 because of poetry. But more than that, storytelling and poetry have much in common: imagery, descriptive language, structure and form- but most importantly, performance. They are both oral narrative art forms. Poetry, like storytelling, is meant to be recited in front of an audience. AMSS mission with poetry is to teach poets how to perform their poems as if they mattered- because they do!
We invite you to learn more and get involved with these two worthy and state-wide organizations. We are members of both and hope to see you at one of the events they host every year:
Calendar of storytelling festivals
Here is a list of upcoming events we are attending:
Earth Week Fest at the Phoenix Five nights of new music, theatre, comedy, & more for Earth Day & Earth Week. April 23rd Stories of the Earth performance will be hosted by Loren Niemi.
National Storytelling Network- Prairie Voices Conference in Canyon, TX, July 23-26- Loren is teaching and hosting the Story Slam, Christine is attending
And of course all the classes and performances at our venue, 1762 Hennepin in Minneapolis.
Would you like us to visit your festival or conference? How about a weekend retreat or workshop in your town? Send us some information and/or a proposal- Have stories, will travel!
Happy Spring!
Loren & Christine
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