Storycatcher - by Christina Baldwin (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

A books for better life award winner

A Spirituality & Health best spiritual book

A Writer's Digest book club selection

The courage to speak, the wisdom to write, the power to change.

Story is the heart of language. Story moves us to love and hate and can motivate us to change the whole course of our lives. Story can lift us beyond our individual borders to imagine the realities of other people, times, and places. Storytelling - both oral tradition and written word - is the foundation of being human.

In this powerful book, Christina Baldwin, one of the visionaries who started the personal writing movement, explores the vital necessity of re-creating a sacred common ground for each other's stories. Each chapter in Storycatcher is carried by a fascinating narrative - about people, family, or community - intertwined with practical instruction about the nature of story, how it works, and how we can practice it in our lives. Whether exploring the personal stories revealed in our private journals, the stories of family legacy, the underlying stories that drive our organizations, or the stories that define our personal identity, Christina's book encourages us all to become storycatchers - and shows us how new stories lay the framework for a new world.

Includes reading group guide

Review Quotes

"As a television journalist, I know the incredible power of story to connect people and issues, and Storycatcherreminds us how essential it is to speak our truth in the world. Christina's book travels the world on the page and helps us put feelings and experiences into words. Her work is a great gift."

- Lisa Ling, host of National Geographic Ultimate Explorer, and special contributor to Oprah

"I am absolutely entranced by this book. I felt woven into its stories and honored by its sincere invitation and guidance to recall my own stories. Christina has created a masterful work, one that reconnects us to the joy of being human and the goodness we create when we tell our stories and listen to those of others. This book brings more goodness into the world."

- Margaret J. Wheatley, author of Leadership and the New Science

"Storycatcher is an invaluable resource and guide that highlights the oldest healing-teaching practice found in all cultures - the art of storytelling. The timeless gift of storytelling and storycatching continues to provide oral, written, and visual pathways for transmitting what is meaningful, wise, and relevant from generation to generation. Christina Baldwin demonstrates how memory and the imagination are braided together in stories to focus our abilities to heal ourselves and change the world around us. A timely and important contribution that can be used in practical and inspirational ways by anyone, anywhere in the world!"

- Angeles Arrien, cultural anthropologist and author of The Four-Fold Way and The Second Half of Life

"For my work, I have surveyed a library full of self-help books about writing personal stories and the process of working with people around listening and telling, but I think Christina Baldwin's Storycatcher might have finally gotten it right - an essential sourcebook for doing Storywork. Christina Baldwin comes from the journaling community, working with writing and group process. The book integrates her wisdom and experience in group process and teaching with her skill as an exceptional storyteller and writer. I enjoyed her stories, but I also felt they were expertly used to demonstrate the various points she was making about the storycatching process. Her arguments for group-based story work as a process for self-awareness, but, equally important, as a form of social activism, are absolutely incontrovertible. We need the story revolution in order to make sense of our lives, but also, it seems, to save the world."

- Joe Lambert, founder and director of the Center for Digital Storytelling

About the Author