Greensboro author Quinn Dalton has written three books of fiction, but even she agrees audiences are more interested in true stories.
"They're interested in the real winner or loser in American Idol or reality TV," Dalton says. "And non-fiction has always outsold fiction, but it's really outselling it now."
So as the organizer for "Eat, Think and Be Merry," Dalton wanted to do something different. The annual Planned Parenthood fundraiser normally hosts a group of novelists who talk about their latest works, but Dalton decided to tweak this year's format and invite the Monti.
Founded by Jeff Polish of Chapel Hill, the Monti hosts a series of sold-out storytelling concerts in Chapel Hill and Durham. Each show features public speakers sharing raw and unscripted true stories from their lives. The stories in each event are centered on a unique theme.
Polish says the reason the Monti is so popular is because audiences are starving for entertainment that will allow them to connect with others.
"With technology and computers, I think we are moving further and further away from one another," Polish says. "When a person is listening to a storyteller, they are getting closer to that person through a shared experience."
Guest storytellers for Greensboro's first edition of the Monti on April 23 will include Triad Stage's Preston Lane, WFMY News 2 anchor Sandra Hughes, local business woman Ursula Dudley and Chapel Hill novelist Daniel Wallace. Each will present personal stories on the theme of "Choices."
Meet the storytellers.
Daniel Wallace
Novelist ("The Watermelon King," "Ray in Reverse," "Big Fish")
Favorite storyteller
David Sedaris. He's really funny and quite moving. He's creative and also quite real, so I would love to be able to tell a story the way he does.
Favorite kinds of stories
Stories that start out in a humorous vein have a greater chance of moving a listener because humor and sadness, grief, and other deep emotions reside in approximately the same place in our hearts; and it's so much easier to get there by making somebody laugh. Once you do make somebody laugh, you're in there, you're inside, you've got a ticket, and there's a lot you can do at that point.
His story for the event
I had a couple of ideas, and then I came up with one that I felt was appropriate to the event. One that actually has something to do with Planned Parenthood, about an old girlfriend and I. I've never talked about sex before in public, so this will be a big first. I'll be blushing the whole time.
Tell us a story
Before I published my first book in 1998, I had been writing for a long time, about 14 years. I had written up to that point, five novels.
Then about eight years into this journey, I got a call from my big sister, who is a successful lawyer in Washington, D.C. Everything she did she was good at, and then she would get bored with it and move on to something else. She said that I inspire her, and that she decided she was going to be a novelist, too.
I wasn't a novelist; I was a failed novelist, and in my mind, I was thinking, 'What a ridiculously bad decision you're making! You're going to be doing this without any kind of success for eight, nine years,' which is how long I'd been doing it.
But I told her, "Congratulations! You go about it and do what you need to do."
Two years later, I'm on my fourth unpublished novel, and I get a call from her. She says in the most excited voice I'd ever heard, "You'll never guess, St. Martin's Press has decided to publish my very first novel! It's coming out next year!"
Inside, I was completely devastated, but I was very kind to her and told her what a great thing it was. But that night, I took all my writing gear, my computer, all of the pages that I had ever written, and put them out on a curb because I knew it was time for another career, that there's no way there would be two novelists in one family. We're not the Brontës.
I kinda sat out with it in the night, drinking some wine, and realized that if I quit writing now, the only thing left for me to do was be the oldest guy at the counter at Kinko's; I had no other skills. So just before the garbage man came at four in the morning, I brought all the stuff back in and decided that I would write one more book, I would give myself one more chance. And I started "Big Fish," which was my first book.
Sandra Hughes
WFMY TV news anchor/multimedia journalist
Favorite storyteller
My grandfather was an old tobacco farmer down in Durham County. He would make up stories. We thought he was reading to us from a book, but we didn't know until we were teenagers that he couldn't read. What he would do is hold up a book and tell these great stories, and I thought it was so fascinating.
Favorite kinds of stories
I love to tell stories about things that happened in my life, that happened to me, my brothers and sisters, my husband, my children or my parents. All the stories I share are based on truth, but I admit that I embellish some stuff, enhance them some, and maybe give them a little more than might have actually happened.
Her story for the event
The story I'm presenting is going to be about choices. I had just had my first child. She was a beautiful girl, and I thought she was absolutely perfect and precious. So I made a choice one night about how to entertain her that turned into quite a story, a story that has lasted me a lifetime because it didn't turn out the way I had planned.
Tell us a story
I have a sister and two brothers, and when we were children, we went to Durham one evening to visit my grandparents. My uncle was there, and he said he was moving from his house into an apartment, and that he was not going to be able to keep his dog Max. It was a beautiful, big, fuzzy, white dog, and he wanted to know if my parents would let us have Max.
Well, of course my parents balked at the offer, but we cried and we whined and we begged until finally they agreed.
We put him in the backseat with us and started back to Durham. The four of us in the backseat with a big, fuzzy, white dog, and all of us trying to be next to it or put our hand on it . We were talking to the dog, trying to bond with the dog and loving that dog instantly.
When we got to Greensboro and pulled up to the front of our house and opened the door, Max jumped out of the car and started running in the opposite direction as hard as he could go. My brothers and sister were jumping out of the car running as fast as we could go and screaming "Max! Please come back! Please, Max!"
We ran and we ran, until the four of us finally gave out. We didn't have any breath left or any strength, and we set down on the side of the curb and just cried.
After, we got our strength back and were walking home. But then this white, fuzzy ball of fur came flying from behind us to the house, so when we got to the house, there was Max sitting on the porch being like, 'Well where have you guys been?'
Preston Lane
Playwright and artistic director at Triad Stage
His favorite storyteller
I grew up in the Appalachian Mountains, so I would have to say Ray Hicks and Orville Hicks. Both of them are great Jack Tale storytellers.
His favorite kinds of stories
I love stories that are very much based in reality but are proof that reality can be stranger than fiction. You start somewhere that you expect life to be, then go somewhere that's completely unexpected.
His story for the event
I am incredibly indecisive. I also depend enormously on inspiration, so I'm sure that the panic of having to tell the story and seeing an audience in front of me will make me decide, but at the moment, I don't know.
Tell us a story
When I was younger, I had very curly hair and dimples. It was a tragic combination. I sort of looked like Shirley Temple.
In seventh grade, I had decided that I had enough of this and was going to put an end to it. So I asked my mother to get me a relaxer perm, which she absolutely refused to do. So I took matters into my own hands and stole an old pair of her pantyhose and cut the foot of them off, and I washed my hair before going to bed. I put the pantyhose on top of my head, a la a burglar mask, and went to sleep.
I solved the curly hair problem perfectly. I suddenly had the straightest hair in the world. I was able to pull this off for about three months of absolutely beautiful hair until one night when I was asleep and the pantyhose rolled up and formed a very tight band across my forehead.
So when I woke up that morning and looked into the mirror to admire my beautiful straight hair and pulled the pantyhose off my head, I had a red indentation about a fourth of an inch deep all the way across my forehead. I think I burst into tears and begged my mom not to send me to school because I couldn't bear the shame of it. But off I went to school with this red mark. It was the butt of jokes for the full week and a half it took to disappear.
The lesson I learned from that story is vanity is wrong, and you should love the hair God gave you.
Ursula Dudley
President of Dudley Beauty Corp., LLC
Her favorite storyteller
Ashby Fuller. He was like a grandfather to me. He was the owner of Fuller Products, Inc., and he gave me inspirational messages about life.
Her favorite kinds of stories
I like stories of triumph, stories of people overcoming various situations. I like stories of hope.
Her story for the event
My story is going to be about forgiveness and of letting go. It will be about this time when I was in college and how someone who was a friend and was jealous about various things, and had basically written a promise that within 10 years he would do harm to me. I had held on to that for eight years, but my story is about letting go, and how we choose to hold on to things and hold on to grudges and how oftentimes people who've said hurtful things don't realize they've said it or had forgotten about it.
Tell us a story
I feel blessed with two parents who raised me to believe I could do anything I wanted to do. Because of that, I've been blessed to be able to attend Harvard undergrad as well as Harvard Law School and make friends with the President of the United States (Barack Obama). We were classmates through school.
He was the first black president of the Harvard Law Review. During that time, a lot of it was more of a faction than a law school, and he was able to bring everybody together.
But the one thing about Barack that I guess people can see is that you are always going to have a serious conversation with him. He'd walk away from the school with his jacket on and his cigarette, and if you were going to talk to him, you were going to have a serious conversation. No small time chit-chat, very little of that.
When he came to the Greensboro Coliseum, I had the chance to say hello to him, and he kissed me on the cheek.
Some people asked me, "Will you wash your cheek?"
And I said, "Absolutely! Nothing comes between me and my Dudley Products – even the next President of the United States."
Contact Joe Scott at movieshowjoe@gmail.com.
