Featured Tellers • Gulf Coast Storytelling Festival

Gay Ducey

Patrick Ball

Wanda Johnson

Gay Ducey is a free lance storyteller and storytelling educator who travels about performing and teaching. She has appeared at many storytelling festivals throughout the United States, Ireland and Canada. Gay has been a featured storyteller at the National Storytelling Festival and guest storyteller on Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. Her storytelling repertoire is eclectic, reflecting today’s diverse society. She tells stories that include traditional tales from world folklore as well as historical, personal and family material. Her style and stories have been described as elegant as well as earthy, full of thoughtful amusements, but always aimed straight at the heart.

She learned an appreciation for stories, language and listening in the best way possible: from family. Gay grew up in a Southern home surrounded by good conversation, fine tales, and gifted tellers. Descended from generations of Southern women, who treasured independence and a sassy mouth, she grew up in New Orleans with its sense of play and ceremony. When she married she and her husband moved to Berkeley, California where they remain. Berkeley’s politics and street theater and New Orleans ancient street life have combined to mold an artist with a lifetime of performance skills and a reverence for the traditional place of the spoken word. She still can’t resist stepping into any parade that passes by.

Gay is a storytelling educator who believes that storytelling is a simple, effective conversation in a complicated world. She has taught storytelling at the University of California, Berkeley’s graduate library school, Dominican University, UC Educational Extension and Santa Rosa Junior College. She has conducted very well received workshops through the country on storytelling topics, organizational development, festival development and a variety of offerings for librarians.

A graduate of UC Berkeley’s School of Library and Information Management, Gay continues to be a children’s librarian at a branch of Oakland Public Library, and the staff trainer for volunteer storytellers in Oakland Head Start Programs. The Berkeley Commission on the Status of Women recently named heroine of the “Outstanding Women of Berkeley”.
Gay was selected as a commissioned artist by the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum of American History where she researched, developed and presented a story of women in the American labor movement. That piece, along with others forms her one-woman show “Union Maid: Stories from America’s Women at Work.” She is the co-author of Mother’s Milk: Traditional Tales of Mothers and Motherhood. It is scheduled for released in May 2005.

Gay is a storytelling organizer and the former Chairperson of the National Association for the Preservation and Perpetuation of Storytelling. She was the 2001 recipient of the Oracle Award for Distinguished National Service in Storytelling. She remains the co-director of the Bay Area Storytelling Festival, the oldest storytelling festival in California.

Patrick Ball was born and raised in California and gave little thought to such things as where his ancestors came from. He went to school and supposed, when he thought about it at all, that he would one day be a lawyer, like his father. But he studied music from time to time and over the years developed a nodding acquaintance with the piano and the guitar. At university he continued his flirtatious relationship with music by playing the tin whistle, principally to annoy his roommate. But at this time he found that he was irresistibly drawn to words, to the music of words, to writers who made words sing, to writers from Ireland. Then, when he began to study history to fulfill his academic requirements, he was not surprised to find that it was the lyrical, turbulent history of Ireland that engaged him. So much so, in fact, that when his father died all his thoughts of law school died with him. He enrolled in graduate school and soon made his way to Ireland. There he fell in love with the eloquence and fire of the Irish oral tradition. There he fell in love with the Celtic harp. And there a few pieces of his life fell into place. For he came to know that marvelous unity of Irish words, music and history that would become his passion and, eventually, his livelihood.

Patrick returned to California, was awarded a Master's Degree in History by Dominican College, and soon discovered that jobs in the field of Irish scholarship were not to be had for love nor money. So after laboring in various unrewarding lines of work he set off hitchhiking around the country and finally fetched up at Penland School of Crafts in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, where he lived for two years and worked as a groundsman. There he encountered a branch of that living oral tradition that had captivated him in Ireland. And there for him, among the Appalachian storytellers, his love of the spoken word was rekindled. He returned to Ireland and listened, then made his way back to California, determined to put his scholarship, his love of words and his neglected musicianship to some use, to carve out for himself an occupation from the things that he loved. He sought out a maker of the rare wire-strung Celtic harp and taught himself to play. He then gathered the stories he had heard and the history he had learned and blended them with the music that had so often been their companion.

He now tours extensively throughout the United States and Canada, is considered one of the premier Celtic harpers and storytellers in the world today, and has recorded nine instrumental and three spoken word albums which have sold well over one-half million copies collectively and earned national awards in both the music and spoken word categories. He also has written and currently performs two solo musical theater pieces: O'Carolan's Farewell to Music, based on the life, times, and music of the most beloved and celebrated musician in the history of Ireland, 17th-18th century harper/composer Turlough O'Carolan, and The Fine Beauty of the Island, a musical journey to Ireland's legendary Blasket Islands in search of a deeply haunting tune and the vanished islanders who played it.

Patrick has been awarded grants for his work by the Zellerbach Family Fund and the California Arts Council and is the recipient of the Circle of Excellence Award from the National Storytelling Association.

Wanda Johnson began her professional career in her hometown of Prichard, Alabama, absorbing the colorful history and rituals of a southern town. Her large family coupled with the flavorful beauty of her community has helped her to cultivate an exciting and enriching storytelling career.

She is a Library Associate for the Mobile Public Library. She is an award winning veteran educator. During her more than twenty years in the field of education she taught all age levels in a variety of educational settings. She earned a master’s degree in Educational Leadership from the University of St. Thomas.

As a professional storyteller, Wanda performs for schools, public libraries, conventions, summer camps, and youth and adult retreats. She challenges her audience to take pride in the lessons, rituals and experiences of life. She encourages young and old to appreciate their personal stories as wealth that should be passed on and preserved.

As a motivational speaker, Wanda speaks at conferences, school district teachers’ institutes, corporate and service organizations’ luncheons, meetings and dinners. Wanda’s inspirational stories based upon her life’s experiences and her ability to touch hearts, enkindle spirits and teach powerful life lessons makes her a sought-after motivational speaker.

As an educational consultant, Wanda presents a variety of workshops and seminars for teachers, pre-teachers, parents and children. She uses her craft to teach others how to use stories and inspires them to tell their own stories. With stories she makes history come alive. During her workshops and seminars, she excites and stimulates the imagination of audiences with her personality, humor and charm.