MELANIE TEM: Storyteller

"Telling the poetry of everyday life"

In the last quarter century, the ancient oral tradition of storytelling has seen a revival in many countries. In America, the first storytelling festival was in Jonesborough, TN, and that's where "telling" got into my blood a little over a year ago, when I sat in the audience transfixed by a master teller and found myself thinking, "I can do that! I want to do that!"

Now there are storytelling festivals in almost every state, including at least three in Colorado, and the Jonesborough festival attracts some 9000 tellers from all over the world. Having been a writer all my life, I'm exhilarated to have discovered all this, for there are stories that must be told without being written.

Here are some of mine:
"Margaret's 'Possums," which is really more about Margaret than about 'possums
"Come Live with Me," about Alzheimer's and poetry
"Cousins," in which shared experiences give rise to very different memories
"An Ordinary Little Life," about how the stories we tell, sometimes without even knowing it, can change someone else's life.

To arrange storytelling for your group or gathering, contact me at melanietem@earthlink.net or 303-477-0235.

STEVE RASNIC TEM's short fiction has been compared to the work of Franz Kafka, Dino Buzzati, Ray Bradbury, and Raymond Carver, but to quote Joe R. Lansdale: "Steve Rasnic Tem is a school of writing unto himself." His 200 plus published pieces have garnered him a British Fantasy Award, and nominations for the World Fantasy and Bram Stoker Awards.

MELANIE TEM's chronicles of the terrors that haunt families and the amazing resilience of the human spirit have collected a Bram Stoker award, a British Fantasy Award, and praise both here and abroad. Stephen King said of her first novel, Prodigal, "spectacular, far better than anything by new writers in the hardcover field." Dan Simmons declared it "A cry from the very heart of the heart of darkness . . . Melanie Tem may well be the literary successor to Shirley Jackson." David Morrell called her ghost novel Revenant "Hauntingly beautiful. Achingly on target." And of Black River, her latest novel published by Headline in England, the British critics said "Fascinating, overwhelming, compelling . . . Melanie Tem is one hell of a writer." (SFX) "One of the most resonant, moving novels of recent years . . . a near-masterpiece." (Darlington Northern Echo)