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American School of Storytelling

@amsstory.bsky.social
42 followers 32 following 528 posts

The American School of Storytelling is a program of classes, performances, and resources dedicated to oral storytelling and other narrative art forms. We are based in Minneapolis, MN. americanschoolofstorytelling.com

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American School of Storytelling @amsstory.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Jackie Collins lays it out: “Do not copy my style! The first rule of writing is write about what you know, not what you think you know. So, think about what you've done in your life and write about that."
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American School of Storytelling @amsstory.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Here's what we have in store for October 2026!  Find out more at: amsstory.com/events
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American School of Storytelling @amsstory.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
“The thing about a story is that you dream it as you tell it, hoping that others might then dream along with you, and in this way memory and imagination and language combine to make spirits in the head. There is the illusion of aliveness.” -Tim O'Brien
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American School of Storytelling @amsstory.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Here's what we have in store for October 2026!  Find out more at: amsstory.com/events
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American School of Storytelling @amsstory.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Today is Confucius' birthday. Here is one of his "best" - “The hardest thing of all is to find a black cat in a dark room, especially if there is no cat.”
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American School of Storytelling @amsstory.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
“There is only one plot- things are not what they seem.” -Jim Thompson
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American School of Storytelling @amsstory.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
“A writer needs three things, experience, observation, and imagination, any two of which, and at times any one of which, can supply the lack of the others.” -William Faulkner
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American School of Storytelling @amsstory.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
“A life without stories would be no life at all. And stories bind us, did they not, one to another, the living to the dead, people to animals, people to the land?” -Alexander McCall Smith
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American School of Storytelling @amsstory.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
“He found himself wondering at times, especially in the autumn, about the wild lands, and strange visions of mountains that he had never seen came into his dreams.” -J.R.R. Tolkien
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American School of Storytelling @amsstory.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
William Golding said: "Novelists do not write as birds sing, by the push of nature. It is part of the job that in order to accomplish anything there should be much routine and some daily stuff on the level of carpentry."
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American School of Storytelling @amsstory.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
It was on this date in1947 that the Central Intelligence Agency was formalized and all the "mischief" of overthrowing governments and running secret operations without congressional review followed.
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American School of Storytelling @amsstory.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
William Carlos Williams: “A poem is this:/A nuance of sound/delicately operating/upon a cataract of sense/...the particulars/of a song waking/upon a bed of sound.”
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American School of Storytelling @amsstory.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
"It seemed clear that wars were not made by generations and their special stupidities, but that wars were made instead by something ignorant in the human heart." - John Knowles
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American School of Storytelling @amsstory.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
On this date in 1867, Karl Marx publishes his critique of capitalism and the basis of its self-destruction, "Das Kapital" as an extension of "The Communist Manifesto" (written with Fredrich Engels) describing how in the class struggle the workers could seize power from the elites.
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American School of Storytelling @amsstory.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
“A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom. He has no master except his own soul, and that, I am sure, is why he does it” -Roald Dahl
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American School of Storytelling @amsstory.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
“She entered the story knowing she would emerge from it feeling she had been immersed in the lives of others, in plots that stretched back twenty years, her body full of sentences and moments, as if awaking from sleep with a heaviness caused by unremembered dreams.” -Michael Ondaatje
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American School of Storytelling @amsstory.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
On this date in 1984, the first episode of "Jeopardy!" with Alex Trebek as host, is broadcast 62 years later it is still in syndication.
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American School of Storytelling @amsstory.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Sonia Sanchez (partial): "the rain exploding in the air is love the grass excreting her green wax is love and stones remembering past steps is love, but you. you are too young for love and i too old."
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American School of Storytelling @amsstory.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
“There is some reason, obviously, that you are drawn to your material, but the way in which you explore it might come to be quite different from what you would expect.” -Ann Beattie
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American School of Storytelling @amsstory.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
Today is early rock star Buddy Holly's birthday. Aside from the music itself, he set the rock standard of two guitars (lead / rhythm), bass, and drums.
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American School of Storytelling @amsstory.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
Born in 1847, Jesse James went from Confederate raider to bank robber to literary and folkloric legend in a life spanning 34 years (15 of them as an outlaw.) That he was killed by one of his own gang members and the subsequent media portrayals helped popularize his fame.
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American School of Storytelling @amsstory.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
“The artist must bow to the monster of his own imagination.” -Richard Wright
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American School of Storytelling @amsstory.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
"It really comes first from the character and the story. That vision of what the story is, and what the character is, the world that they inhabit and what the story wants to tell. That's really what inspires me." - Keanu Reeves
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American School of Storytelling @amsstory.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
"I have been successful probably because I have always realized that I knew nothing about writing and have merely tried to tell an interesting story entertainingly." - Edgar Rice Burroughs
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American School of Storytelling @amsstory.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
“There is no calamity which a great nation can invite which equals that which follows a supine submission to wrong and injustice and the consequent loss of national self-respect and honor, beneath which are shielded and defended a people's safety and greatness." -Eldridge Cleaver
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American School of Storytelling @amsstory.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
Mary Shelley - "Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void, but out of chaos." also put it another way - "My dreams were at once more fantastic and agreeable than my writings."
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American School of Storytelling @amsstory.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
Today is Charlie "Bird" Parker's 106th birthday. Master of the sax, he both set the tone and pushed the boundary of melody with jazz then, jazz now, jazz forever.
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American School of Storytelling @amsstory.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Today is the first day of the MN State Fair, the true marking of the end of summer - the first of 12 days of eating something on a stick while the crowd milling about tries to see this year’s seed crop art or butterhead sculptures.
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American School of Storytelling @amsstory.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
“The biographer's problem is that he never knows enough. The autobiographer's problem is that he knows too much.” -Russell Baker
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American School of Storytelling @amsstory.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
Edgar Lee Masters on success: Those who first oppose a good work, will seize it and make it their own when the cornerstone is laid and memorial tablets are erected.
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American School of Storytelling @amsstory.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
Robert Stone on novel writing: "I write a very rough first draft of every chapter, then I rewrite every chapter. I try to get it down in the first rewrite, but some chapters I can't get quite right. There are some I go over and over and over again until they fit or I throw them away."
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American School of Storytelling @amsstory.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
Today marks the third year the American School of Storytelling has offered classes and performances in our 1762 Hennepin Ave space and having said that, we look forward to another year of celebrating the oral narrative arts.
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American School of Storytelling @amsstory.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
Charles Bukowski: "Censorship is the tool of those who have the need to hide actualities from themselves and from others. Their fear is only their inability to face what is real, and I can't vent any anger against them; I only feel this appalling sadness."
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American School of Storytelling @amsstory.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
“I got a little tape recorder and laid it on my chest and kept describing the scene as I saw it. Just the opening scenes took about 45 minutes. I don’t know how it’s going to end, but I like it that way. If I knew how it ended, I’d lose interest in the story.” - Alex Haley
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American School of Storytelling @amsstory.bsky.social · 09/08/2026
If you enjoyed More Better Stories, please write a review on the MN Fringe Website! Positive reviews assure unfamiliar audiences that our mighty little venue is worth the trip. minnesotafringe.org/shows/2...
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American School of Storytelling @amsstory.bsky.social · 09/08/2026
Philip Larkin who said, “I feel the only thing you can do about life is to preserve it, by art if you're an artist, by children if you're not.” also said, “Time is the echo of an axe / Within a wood.”
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American School of Storytelling @amsstory.bsky.social · 08/08/2026
Dustin Hoffman on finding his "life's work" - "So when I told my parents I wanted to go into acting because I was flunking out of my first year of junior college, they were relieved that I had picked something other than joining the army."
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American School of Storytelling @amsstory.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
A belated nod to storyteller and national treasure, Elizabeth Ellis who celebrated her 83rd birthday on August 2nd. She who has said, "the role of the storyteller is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comforted."
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American School of Storytelling @amsstory.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
Many thanks to Becky Fillinger for the write up in the Minneapolis Times! minneapolistimes.com/loren-...
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American School of Storytelling @amsstory.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
“All fiction is largely autobiographical and much autobiography is, of course, fiction.” - P.D. James
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American School of Storytelling @amsstory.bsky.social · 01/08/2026
Here at the first of the month, Herman Melville warns us: “Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity about humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well- warmed, and well-fed.”
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American School of Storytelling @amsstory.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
“Works of art are meant to be lived with and loved dearly, and if we try to understand them, we should try to understand them as we try to understand anyone—in order to know them better, not in order to know something else.” -William H. Gass
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American School of Storytelling @amsstory.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
Here on the edge of August, let us remember, as Booth Tarkington said: “There aren't any old times. When times are gone they're not old, they're dead! There aren't any times but new times!” Or as my pal, Gregory used to put it: "Let us live in the present with an attitude of gratitude..."
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American School of Storytelling @amsstory.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
"I write for children because I am interested in fantasy and the possibilities for experience of all kinds before the time of compromise. I believe that children are far more perceptive and wise than American books give them credit for being." - Natalie Babbitt
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American School of Storytelling @amsstory.bsky.social · 26/07/2026
Aldous Huxley with the uncomfortable truth that many of us fail to understand: “Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.”
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American School of Storytelling @amsstory.bsky.social · 26/07/2026
Philosopher Eric Hoffer, posits: “The remarkable thing is that we really love our neighbor as ourselves: we do unto others as we do unto ourselves. We hate others when we hate ourselves. We are tolerant toward others when we tolerate ourselves. We forgive others when we forgive ourselves..."
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American School of Storytelling @amsstory.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
When Zelda Fitzgerald says, “She quietly expected great things to happen to her, and no doubt that’s one of the reasons why they did.” is it a statement of circumstance or intention?
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American School of Storytelling @amsstory.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
“Without magic, there is no art. Without art, there is no idealism. Without idealism, there is no integrity. Without integrity, there is nothing but production.” -Raymond Chandler
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American School of Storytelling @amsstory.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
S.E. Hinton said: "How a piece ends is very important to me. It's the last chance to leave an impression with the reader, the last shot at 'nailing' it. I love to write ending lines; usually, I know them first and write toward them, but if I knew how they came to me, I wouldn't tell."
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American School of Storytelling @amsstory.bsky.social · 20/07/2026
“The truth is always made up of little particulars which sound ridiculous when repeated.” -Thomas Berger
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