October 10-12, 2024
Join us for this three-day storytelling event. Sandbar Storytelling Festival provides exciting performances and compelling chronicles amidst the breathtaking beauty of Winona, MN. Come celebrate and preserve the power and pleasure of our varied cultural traditions and human experiences. Help us promote the art of storytelling for all ages.
The public festival includes food, workshops, competitions, concerts, and — of course — storytelling at Saint Mary’s University. Multiple other events are also planned for Winona schools, universities, and other venues throughout Winona.
The SSF24 storytellers are:
Carolina Quiroga-Stultz is returning for SSF24 after having performed at the inaugural 2022 Festival. Carolina is a bilingual storyteller who engages her audience with Latin American stories from El Río Grande to La Patagonia. Since arriving in the US, she has been featured at the National Storytelling Festival and The Timpanogos Storytelling Festival, among other events. Carolina has toured numerous schools, libraries, museums, and cultural institutions from east to west, sharing the richness of Latin American and Hispanic folklore. Her dedication to stories brought her to produce her literary podcast, Tres Cuentos, which showcases Latin America’s literature and can be found at her website. Today, Carolina showcases animated videos for kids, parents, and teachers to enjoy on her YouTube Channel @CarolinaQuirogaStoryteller. As a teacher-artist for The Wolf Trap Institute of Early Learning since 2016, Carolina created an integrated curriculum for Pre-K classrooms in San Antonio, Texas. She is part of the TAPAS (Teaching Artists Presenting in Asheville Schools) today.
Sheila Arnold is a Professional Storyteller, Character Interpreter and Teaching Artist. Through her company, History’s Alive!, Sheila has provided storytelling programs, historic character presentations, Christian monologues, dramatic/creative writing workshops, professional development for educators and inspirational/motivational speeches at schools, churches, libraries, professional organizations and museums, in 36 states since 2003. She is also a sought-after historical consultant for museums and exhibit designers helping to develop engaging stories from historical documents, artifacts, buildings and the historical use of land and water. Sheila has grown tremendously in her field – being selected as a Mt. Vernon (George Washington estate) Research Fellow and a noted artist selected as part of 2019 Hewnoaks Artist Colony summer residency. Most recently, Sheila was awarded an artistic fellowship at McDowell in Peterborough, NH for December of 2021. She currently resides in Hampton, VA to be close to her family.
Len Cabral is an internationally acclaimed storyteller who has been enchanting audiences with his storytelling performances at schools, libraries, museums, and festivals since 1976. A great grandson of a Cape Verdean whaler whose grandparents immigrated to America from the islands off the coast of West Africa, Len’s strong Cape Verdean ancestry comes alive in his exuberant retelling of African, Cape Verdean, and Caribbean folktales as well as original stories and tales from around the world. Len is a popular storyteller at theaters, schools and festivals throughout the United States and has performed at festivals in Ireland, Belgium, Austria, Holland, and Canada. He is the recipient of the National Storytelling Network 2001 Circle of Excellence Oracle Award. The author of a children’s book for young readers and contributing to several folktale collections, Len also has five CDs and audio cassettes featuring a wide range of his favorite stories, several receiving NAPPA and Parents’ Choice awards.
Tim Tingle is an Oklahoma Choctaw and an award-winning author and storyteller. His great-great grandfather, John Carnes, walked the Trail of Tears in 1835, and his paternal grandmother attended a series of rigorous Indian boarding schools in the early 1900’s. In 1993, Tingle retraced the Trail of Tears to Choctaw homelands in Mississippi and began recording stories of tribal elders. Tim was a featured author and speaker at the 2014 National Book Festival in Washington, D.C., based on critical acclaim for “How I Became a Ghost,” which won the 2014 American Indian Youth Literature Award. Tim received his M.A. in English Literature at the University of Oklahoma in 2003, with a focus on American Indian studies. While teaching writing courses and completing his thesis, “Choctaw Oral Literature,” Tingle wrote his first book, “Walking the Choctaw Road.” It was selected as Book of the Year in both Oklahoma and Alaska.
Paul Strickland is a professional storyteller and theatre artist who lives in Kentucky. He has well over 7 hours of unique family friendly stories in his repertoire, including reupholstered folk tales, fairytales for adults and future adults, tall-tales and even historical stories that just happened to have never happened. Paul was an FEATURED TELLER: NEW VOICE at the National Storytelling Festival in 2023. He was also a Featured Teller at the Timpanogos Storytelling Festival in September of 2023, and has been a featured teller at several major storytelling festivals, including the Cave Run Storytelling Festival, in 2022. In November of 2018 he made his NYC stage debut Off-Broadway at the SoHo Playhouse with his shadow and flashlight ghost story play “13 Dead Dreams of “Eugene.” Always adapting to whatever audience is in front of him, Paul LOVES telling stories in every imaginable environment, from comedy clubs to elementary and middle schools, corporate events and even two prisons – where he was NOT an inmate at the time. Collections of his stories have won “Best of Fest” honors more than 16 times at Fringe Theatre Festivals in the US and Canada. Selections from his comedy performance “Levels of Difficulty” are still played nearly every day on SiriusXM radio. “An hour spent with master storyteller Paul Strickland is an hour well spent, and one you should not miss.” – Cincinnati Enquirer