Suddenly They Heard Footsteps: Storytelling for the Twenty-First Century - Softcover

Yashinsky, Dan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0676975933 ISBN 13: 9780676975932

Publisher: Random House Canada, 2005

Synopsis

Canada’s best-known storyteller, Dan Yashinsky, lives his life as teller and listener, and shows how storytelling can and does create vital connections between individuals, communities and families.

In an age of instant messaging, entertainment systems and digital interaction, why is it that more and more people are being drawn to the art of oral storytelling? As Dan Yashinsky, one of Canada’s most well-known and beloved storytellers shows, an old tradition has become the new avant-garde. Storytelling is still very much alive in this digital age: it connects us to each other, to our communities and to our past. In fact, people are as hungry as they've ever been for the wisdom and solace of told stories. But they are also looking for stories that will speak to our post-modern, fractured, apocalyptic age.

Suddenly They Heard Footsteps is part memoir, part instruction, part cultural history, and includes tales that Dan has told to wide acclaim. By turns humorous, inspiring, instructive and philosophical, Dan shows us that, like love, stories mean the most the very moment we give them away.

About this title

Product Description

Suddenly They Heard Footsteps Canada's best-known storyteller, Dan Yashinsky, lives his life as teller and listener, and shows how storytelling can and does create vital connections between individuals, communities and families. In an age of instant messaging, entertainment systems and digital interaction, why is it that more and more people are being drawn to the art of oral storytelling? As Dan Yashinsky, one of Canada's most well-known and beloved storytellers shows, an old tradition has become the new avant-garde. Storytelling is still very much alive in this digital age: it connects us to each other, to our communities and to our past. In fact, people are as hungry as they've ever ...

Review

"Yashinsky sows stories along the wayside as he explains how and why listeners are hooked, reveals the secrets of story hosts, and describes the extraordinary characters who have sparked the contemporary international revival of this most universal and durable of the arts. Yashinsky himself is one of those extraordinary characters. He gives us much to laugh at, provoke thought, wonder about, and remember and pass on. If the word awesome had not been rendered meaningless by trendiness, it would be the adjective for this book. As it is, spell-binding will do."
--Jane Jacobs, author of The Death and Life of Great American Cities and Dark Age Ahead

"If you can't sit down for a cup of tea and a chat with Yashinsky, sitting down with this book is a close second."
--Winnipeg Free Press

"Suddenly They Heard Footsteps is at once a polemic for storytelling and a personal memoir, a handbook for prospective storytellers and an anthology of tales from which the reader may borrow. It is a passionate work of deeply held belief....Readers will come away from Suddenly They Heard Footsteps with all the basic tools and the inspiration they need to try storytelling for themselves."
--Quill & Quire

"A melange of memoir, social history and how-to guide, Yashinsky's love of the spoken word imbues the whole package with warm authority."
--The Toronto Star

"In celebrating the storyteller's art, Yashinsky has tapped into a motherlode of universal need, the thirst for a story that shows us what it is to be human."
--Edmonton Journal

Edition details

• Publisher: Random House Canada
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0676975933
• ISBN 13: 9780676975932
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 318