Dr. Michael Williams

I'd wanted to be a writer since the age of 13 when my grandmother gave me a journal to record my observations during a car journey to the Rocky Mountains. However, my father interfered with my plans by insisting that I get a job in the local steelworks. Instead, I ventured off to work underground in a mine.

Ironically, it was there, 3600 feet below the surface, that my shift boss (a man of my father's generation) took me aside and told me I had too much imagination to be working in a mine. He urged me to return to the surface and "become a writer or a journalist." That would be the beginning of a long, meandering journey across land and sea, working as a counsellor, a musician, a teacher, and a storyteller. In the late '80s, my family and I moved to Edinburgh, Scotland where I obtained my Ph.D. in English Literature. I spent nearly 15 years teaching both post-secondary and secondary school students before embarking on a new journey as an itinerant storyteller and story coach. My travels took me the length and breadth of Scotland, the rest of the UK, Europe, the Middle East, and Canada.

When COVID arrived in 2019, my travels came to an end. I found myself in Canada where I began writing stories based on my life's adventures. One of those projects involved writing about my reflections on my years working as a story coach, helping others find and share their stories. In 2024, I finally published the "ABCs of Storytelling: Reflections of a Story Coach" on Amazon. The book contains tips, techniques, stories and reflections to assist both beginners and experienced storytellers, writers, and public speakers.

While I hope it's not my last book, it marks a major milestone in my writing career, for it reminds me that I have had to have lived a life of stories before I could start writing about them. At the age of 72, it feels like life is just beginning.