Gather

Book excerpt: Master storyteller and bestselling author Richard Van Camp on how to tell a good story Gathering around a campfire, or the dinner table, we humans have always told stories. Through the stories we tell, we define our own identities and shape our understanding of the world. Master storyteller and bestselling author Richard Van Camp writes of the power of storytelling and its potential to transform both the speaker and the audience in Gather. Describing the elements required to make a story, he offers insights into how to read a room, how to capture the attention of listeners, how to create community through storytelling, and how to banish loneliness. A member of the Tlicho Dene First Nation, Van Camp includes stories from Elders whose wisdom influenced him. Praise for Richard Van Camp: "Stories and storytellers are an important part of what makes us human. Van Camp's stories, whether they feature light comedy, family discord and reconciliation or his vivid images of the legendary Wheetago monsters, revived by global warming and horrifically hungry for human flesh, are gifts to the reader." --Vancouver Sun "Van Camp is... a brilliant weaver of tales." --Quill & Quire