We know from history and social justice movements that stories are among our most powerful tools for creating social change.
But how does the act of sharing the truths we’ve lived or witnessed alter the person doing the truth-telling? What impact can “activist storytelling” have on personal healing? How do we challenge those who seek to “disappear” stories that speak truth to power during times of high political conflict?
And how can you discover the storyteller within?
On September 5th, Emmy Award-winning activist and Young Adult novelist Ruchira Gupta(Girls Bazaar); and our Center for Story & Witness co-founders, author and activist Anne K Ream (Lived Through This: Listening to the Stories of Sexual Violence Survivors), and novelist and Yale University Lecturer in Creative Writing R. Clifton Spargo (Beautiful Fools: The Last Affair of Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald) explored these and other questions during Using Story to Change the World, and Transform Ourselves, a Center for Story & Witness dialogue at the 40th Annual Printers Row Lit Fest, the Midwest’s largest literary and ideas festival.