New Cedar Rapids Storytelling Festival Coming to Library

Sept. 11, 2025 – Everyone has a story – and we need to listen to each other’s stories.

That’s the message behind the Cedar Rapids Storytelling Festival, a new event organized by local nonprofit TellersBridge. The festival will be Oct. 1-4 at locations around Cedar Rapids, including at the Downtown Library.

“Stories are happening every second of every minute, and they’re happening all around you,” TellersBridge storyteller Kory May said. “Everyone has a story to tell. Everyone has multiple stories to tell.”

Founded in 2019, with regular meetings since 2022, TellersBridge puts on storytelling performances around the Corridor, as well as virtual storytelling workshops anyone can participate in.

The founding members, Sue Schmitt, Gary Whitehill, Mark Latta, Kory May, Ben Trachsel, and Jamie Ward, were all Toastmasters, and they started talking about how the area needed a storytelling group. They now do two shows a month, skipping December, one at Rayo Mexican Bar & Grill in North Liberty and one at Parlor City in Cedar Rapids.

May said they model what they do off NPR storytelling shows like “The Moth,” “Snap Judgment,” and “This American Life.” He has participated in several Moth events, winning two Moth story slams and two grand slams, and telling a story at a Moth mainstage performance at the Englert in Iowa City.

Shows are a combination of curated stories and open mic, with anyone in the audience invited to get up and share. Each show has a theme – this fall’s themes include “windfall” in September, “spooked” in October, and “grace” in November. Each show is about two hours, with at least six stories told, each about 6-8 minutes long.

“We’ve played to an audience of one, and we’ve played to an audience of 45,” May said.

They also do two workshops via Zoom each month, which are free to attend. Participants workshop stories and bounce ideas off each other.

They officially became a nonprofit this spring, with the primary mission of creating a storytelling community. That led to the idea for the festival.

Plans include partnerships with other local organizations such as the Cedar Rapids Opera and the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art. They also plan to have professional storytellers come in, workshops for storytellers, and other events. They said they want to represent a diverse set of voices.

“The whole art and act of storytelling is multi-cultural,” May said. “Every culture has an art of storytelling. It’s a reminder of our common humanity.”

Schmitt said the public library was a perfect setting for the festival – a place already filled with stories ready to transport readers into experiences and perspectives different than their own.

“Stories are windows into different worlds. You may not know what it is to be a Black man in America, but when I tell a story, you have the chance to access it,” May said. “I don’t know what it was like to grow up as a girl in Iowa during the Vietnam era, but when Sue shares a story, I can access it.”

Everyone, of all ages and backgrounds, is invited to share their story.

“We want to hear from 20-year-olds, from 30-year-olds. We once had a kid tell a story at an open mic, and that was great,” Latta said.

Building bridges across cultures, ideologies, and other divides is one of the motivations behind the festival.

“Everybody’s got a story, everybody’s got a voice,” Schmitt said. “We all need to be talking to each other. We think storytelling is especially vital to our community ... I think it is timely.”

May agreed.

“This was the best time to build something here in Iowa,” he said. “We need it. We need to talk to each other. It’s a time for us to speak and connect and relate.”

Learn more about the Cedar Rapids Storytelling Festival and TellersBridge at CRStorytellingfestival.org