At first glance, visitors to Bourbon County may notice the rolling hills and green pastures. Thoroughbreds dot the landscape beside the pristine barns of the Bluegrass region. Miles of wooden fences signify the biggest industry in this part of the state.
About 20 miles from Lexington is the charming town of Paris, the county seat. There you will find antique stores, a boot boutique that stocks fashionable clothes, a photography shop that captures the essence of the town and country, the smell of home-roasted coffee, shops with a wealth of gift items, a Mexican grocery, a Vietnamese restaurant, places to get homemade pies and rolls, a leather shop, a print shop and several restaurants.
If you arrive in Paris on the second weekend in May, you are in for a treat—the Paris Storytelling Festival. Five professional storytellers will be in town from surrounding states to promote their art, and most performances are free to the public. The only events with a fee are adult storytelling on Friday night (it’s a hoot!), a buffet breakfast in a refurbished old train station, and a storytelling dinner on Saturday night in the backyard of the Wallis House, home of the The Garden Club of Kentucky.
Beginning Friday, the tellers travel individually to all the local schools, as well as those in neighboring Nicholas County, and a local nursing home. Friday night is a time for adults. Tellers keep the audience in stitches as they weave tales a little on the raucous side.
Saturday is the real meat of the weekend. That morning, visitors may enjoy a buffet breakfast at an old railroad depot-turned-restaurant called Trackside and stories from two of the tellers, or they can opt out of the breakfast and bring a chair for free storytelling.
Located at 134 East 10th Street, Trackside Depot has been a Paris landmark since 1882. As a train depot, the site was crowded with salesmen, students and people traveling for business and leisure. Sometimes, it was used to ship racehorses to New York and Baltimore, with their owners in the first-class compartment. Farmers often exported their hemp and grain products to faraway markets, along with sheep, cattle and hogs, which were sent to Chicago. Celebrities for the new opera house on Main Street arrived and departed by train. Fans and diners can still hear and see the trains pass by the depot, and the engineers usually wave as they pass.
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After the morning storytelling, visitors have the choice of participating in a jam session with a whistling, guitar-playing storyteller or listening to a horse story from yet another raconteur at the newly built Secretariat Park in downtown Paris. The jam session will be held in the old Paris post office, which is now the Hopewell Museum and home to much of the history of the city.
On Saturday afternoon, visitors can hear tales from all five tellers at the Storytelling Showcase under a tent in the arboretum of the Wallis House. Each teller will have 20-25 minutes to tell a story and give the audience a preview of what to expect at the upcoming dinner.
That evening, visitors will enjoy music while they heap their plates from a catered buffet dinner and listen to the stories after they eat. Adults and children can view the trees and flowers planted on the Wallis House grounds as they listen to a variety of stories from the tellers.
The storytellers this year will be Bil Lepp, Donald Davis, Donna Washington, Andy Offutt Irwin and Carolina Quiroga. Sheila Arnold, a renowned storyteller in her own right, serves as the festival’s adviser and brings some of the top performers to Paris. She has been performing at the festival since its 2017 beginning.
“The Paris Storytelling Festival is one of many storytelling festivals throughout the country and even throughout the world. But it will always be close to my heart,” Arnold said. “Each year, I sit down with the president [Mary S. Lovell] and help decide which storytellers to invite the next year.
“The festival has grown over the seven years it has existed, evolving into an event in which national storytellers are now contacting us about the event in hopes of performing.”
Lepp has headlined the Paris Storytelling Festival since its inception. Hailing from West Virginia, he is an All-American storyteller and a five-time winner of the West Virginia State Liars’ Contest. He has performed at storytelling festivals across the nation and is a regular performer at the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, Tennessee.
Lepp leaves people falling from their chairs with laughter as he tells stories he has written about the antics that he and the make-believe Skeeter got into while growing up in West Virginia. His stories are always funny and contain a bit of universal wisdom.
“It’s been great to be part of the Paris Storytelling Festival over the past few years as it grows into one of the best festivals in the region,” Lepp said.
This is the first time Donald Davis has graced the stage in Paris, but he has been pursued every year as one of the best in the business. Born in the story-rich region of Southern Appalachia, he weaves tales that leave audiences laughing, crying and sighing as he leaves “a lump in the throat” of each listener. The author of more than 30 books, he is a regular at the National Storytelling Festival.
Donna Washington is no stranger to the storytelling circuit. Her forte is scary stories, but she also tells tales from Greek mythology, African and African American folktales, fables and Jack Tales (folktales from the Southern Appalachian Mountains). Washington started life as an “Army brat,” moving from Colorado, where she grew up, to South Korea, where she spent five years in school. She is very animated as she weaves her stories.
Carolina Quiroga intersperses her stories with some Spanish as she relates Latin American and Hispanic myths, legends and mysteries. She also tells traditional Hispanic tales, personal stories, tall tales and ghost stories.
Andy Offutt Irwin often includes fictional stories of his 85-year-old, widowed, newly minted physician aunt, Dr. Marguerite Van Camp, using an old lady voice to portray her humorous rants. But he is equally at home telling stories of Johnny and his brother Kenny and growing up in integrated schools. He will be performing in a jam session at the Hopewell Museum.
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The festival nears a close on Sunday morning in five different churches, as the tellers relate a final tale before heading home. Then, the Paris-Bourbon County Public Library will host a showing of The Paris 3, a documentary of three Black girls who were refused service in a Paris eatery in the early 1960s, prior to desegregation, leading to positive changes in the community. All three women are still alive and have been invited to attend the showing, along with the granddaughter of one of the women. There will be a facilitated open discussion after the showing.
MAY 10–12, 2024
Information on the Paris Storytelling Festival schedule and tickets for the dinner, buffet breakfast and adult storytelling on Friday night can be found online at parisstoryfest.com, the Paris Storytelling Inc. Facebook page or by sending an email to ParisStoryFest@gmail.com.