Fran Stallings

Fran Stallings
Born Frances Karen Oguss
(1943-08-28) August 28, 1943
Far Rockaway, New York
Occupation Storyteller
Years active 1982–present
Partner(s) Gordon Stallings (1968–present; married)
Children 2

Fran Stallings is an American storyteller for people of all ages. She has performed at numerous national and international storytelling festivals, in schools and libraries, and on the radio. She performs primarily folktales from around the world. She has authored several audio recordings and books of stories and songs.

Stallings's storytelling style is noted for its ability to entrance listeners, a phenomenon she wrote about for The National Storytelling Journal in 1988.[1] She teaches teachers to use stories in the classroom to hold students' attention while conveying lessons.

Biography

Fran grew up in New York City but spent much of her childhood in Lancaster, Ohio, to which she attributes her Midwestern rather than New York accent.[2]:170 She began storytelling while caring for her four younger siblings; her mother was concerned that their imaginations would be stunted by growing up with television.[2]:171

She attended Wellesley College partly on the basis of their dance program[2]:171 but majored in biology after a campus job doing illustrations of botanitcal specimens aroused her interest in plant physiology, and a professor used storytelling in his lectures to interest her in chemistry[2]:174–5 She then attended the University of Wisconsin as a National Science Foundation Fellow in botany, studying cell differentiation in fungus.[2]:173–4 She met her husband, Gordon, when they were both in their senior year of undergraduate school.[2]:175 She worked as an assistant professor at a branch of Kent State University from 1970-1973 before following Gordon's work to Ann Arbor, Michigan and then to Bartlesville, Oklahoma.[2]:176 Finding no market for her botanical skills in Bartlesville,[2]:178 she pursued her interest in folktales and began storytelling in the classroom in 1978, while her two children were in elementary school. Her biology background and teaching experience both resurfaced as a thread in her storytelling: as "EarthTeller" she teaches science through stories.[3]

Fran's scientific background (and young children) got her involved as a group leader in Bartlesville's La Leche League,[2]:178 and her connections there led her to local organizing to pass the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA).[2]:181 When the ERA did not pass, and a spinal problem in 1980 caused her to spend most of a summer in bed, she picked up the phone and helped to organize a women's shelter, a gifted education program, and what became the Bartlesville Women's Network.[2]:182–4

By 1985, while still recovering from spinal surgery, Fran began working as an artist-in-residence for the Oklahoma State Arts Council.[2]:184 In 1993 Fran visited Japan with her family and met Hiroko Fujita, a storyteller from Fukushima Prefecture, and the two began a professional partnership, touring the U.S. twelve times and Japan seven times from 1995-2008.[2]:184–5 Their partnership was awarded the International Storybridge Award in 2003.[4]

In March, 2009, Fran won the Tejas Storytelling Association's John Henry Faulk award for "the person who has contributed the most toward the art of storytelling in the Southwest." [5][6]

Notable performance venues[7]

Publications

Recordings

External links

Notes

  1. ↑ Stallings, F. "The Web of Silence: Storytelling's Power to Hypnotize." National Storytelling Journal, Spring/Summer 1988. http://www.healingstory.org/articles/web_of_silence/fran_stallings.html
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 Langley, Deborah; Susan Lauffer (2013). "Frances "Fran" Stallings née Oguss". Taproots: Transcriptions of the Bartlesville Women's Network Oral History Project (PO Box 417, Bartlesville, OK 74005: Bartlesville Women's Network) 7: 168–187.
  3. ↑ http://www.franstallings.com/Fran/Bio
  4. ↑ http://www.storynet.org/Programs/Awards/storybridge.html
  5. ↑ http://www.tejasstorytelling.com/aboutus/faulk.htm
  6. ↑ http://www.examiner-enterprise.com/articles/2009/04/19/community/com600.txt
  7. ↑ http://www.franstallings.com/Bio/Resume
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