Upcoming and past live shows
World Read Aloud Day feels like a perfect time to share our four “College Try” storytellers who will trade true tales and speak each other’s words aloud, empowering voices on the page and Symphony Space stage!
Learn more about the show, storytellers, and save your seat by CLICKING HERE for info and to buy tickets. In-Person and Live Stream available. See you on March 16th and spread the word!!
Thrilled to share that our first show of 2023 is at SYMPHONY SPACE. Follow @noyoutellit on Insta for updates!
More info and buy your in-person or livestream tickets here.
Check out the No, YOU Tell It! Ten-Year Anthology 2022 available from Palm Circle Press in paperback or e-Book to learn how the collaborative nature of our series makes writing and performing personal narratives accessible, empathetic, and transformative.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel to watch live streams from our 2022 season and more.
Our Brooklyn Book Festival Bookend Event hosted by Ellie Dvorkin Dunn is tonight! In-person at Culture Lab, LIC or WATCH HERE virtually via YouTube.
Doors 6:30 / Show starts at 7 pm!
FREE but we’ll be collecting donations for Friends with Four Paws with a match for the first $50. Want to donate directly? Venmo @friendswith-fourpaws or via their website.
Plus, a chance to win the No, YOU Tell It! Ten-Year Anthology 2022, now available to order in paperback and eBook (with links to listen to all the stories via our podcast).
Take a look at these four storytellers who have been developing their “Punch Up” tales on the page with guest story coach and NYTI alum Pichchenda Bao. Tonight, they’ll step into their partners’ shoes and perform each other stories on stage.
Confection Resolution written by Matt Storrs, performed by Maria Rubio, and directed by KJ Fitzsimmons
The Great Unknowns written by Maria Rubio, performed by Matt Storrs, and directed by KJ Fitzsimmons
Shaman Says written by Jenn Wehrung, performed by Aida Zilelian, and directed by Ellie Dvorkin Dunn
One Final Lesson written by Aida Zilelian, performed by Jenn Wehrung, and directed by Ellie Dvorkin Dunn
Thank you, thank you to everyone who made this night possible!
THIS IS AN OFFICIAL 2022 BROOKLYN BOOK FESTIVAL BOOKEND EVENT
Want to support 10 more years of No, YOU Tell It! Here are 3 great ways:
Rehearsals start tomorrow for Monday’s show. Our storytellers have worked together over the past weeks to develop their true tales on the page. After trading tales, they each work one-on-one with a NYTI director to help embody their story partner’s experience on stage.
Before they begin, let’s meet our final “Punch Up” storyteller, Matt Storrs!!
Matt Storrs is a comedian and storyteller based out of NYC and originally from Phoenix, AZ.
Matt created and performed his one-person show “Portly Lutheran Know-It-All” (Frigid Festival, Denver Fringe Festival, Providence FringePVD).
He has also been featured in Vox. Matt brings his religious and legal background to the stage with his sharp stories and esoteric comedy.
Matt Storrs is a humor person.
RSVP via FB or email noyoutellit@gmail.com. You can also watch a live stream of the show here!
THIS IS AN OFFICIAL 2022 BROOKLYN BOOK FESTIVAL BOOKEND EVENT
Our storytellers are busy revising their true tales on the page before flipping scripts to rehearse each other’s stories this weekend. We are so excited about our Bookend Event on Monday and can’t wait for you to meet our next storyteller, Aida Zilelian!
Aida Zilelian is a first-generation American-Armenian writer, educator, and storyteller from Queens, NY. Her debut novel The Legacy of Lost Things was published in 2015 and was the recipient of the 2014 Tololyan Literary Award. Aida has been featured on NPR, The Huffington Post, Kirkus Reviews, Poets & Writers, and various reading series throughout Queens and Manhattan. She is also the curator of Boundless Tales, which was one of the longest-running reading series in Queens, NY. Her short story collection These Hills Were Meant for You was shortlisted for the 2018 Katherine Anne Porter Award. Aida’s most recently completed novel, All the Ways We Lied, is forthcoming in January 2024 (Keylight Books).
RSVP via FB or email noyoutellit@gmail.com. You can also watch a live stream of the show here!
THIS IS AN OFFICIAL 2022 BROOKLYN BOOK FESTIVAL BOOKEND EVENT
Our second storyteller, Jenn Wehrung, is returning for her second NYTI show! Give a listen to Jenn trading “Three Strikes” tales here.
Learn more about Jenn below and join us at QED Astoria TONIGHT where she is hosting a special one-night-only “Laugh It Up, Astoria!” with fellow NYTI alum Liz Simons.
Jenn Wehrung is a comic, writer, former burlesque queen, and dog lover! She performs at clubs and holes-in-the-wall all over NYC and beyond including QED, Stand Up NY, that one bar on the LES, and even The Royal Hall For Cornwall in England! She has been featured on the Mortified podcast, heard on BBC radio, and made jokes at the New York Comedy Fest. She co-hosts the drink-a-long podcast, Bottled Up! and posts a LOT of pics of her dog on Instagram.
RSVP via FB or email noyoutellit@gmail.com. You can also watch a live stream of the show here!
THIS IS AN OFFICIAL 2022 BROOKLYN BOOK FESTIVAL BOOKEND EVENT
The Brooklyn Book Festival starts Sunday! Our Bookend Event is less than a week away so it’s time to meet our first storyteller Maria Rubio.
Learn more about Maria below and check out the other Bookend Events happening citywide next week.
Maria Rubio is a writer of poetry, prose, and scripts for both stage and screen. She is also a registered nurse, educator, and consultant specializing in psychiatry, mental health, and sexual education.
Come to Culture Lab, LIC on Monday to see Maria trade true tales with her story partner.
RSVP via FB or email noyoutellit@gmail.com. You can also watch a live stream of the show here!
THIS IS AN OFFICIAL 2022 BROOKLYN BOOK FESTIVAL BOOKEND EVENT
One week until our Brooklyn Book Festival Bookend Event! What better way to celebrate the release of the No, YOU Tell It! Ten-Year Anthology 2022 than giving away copies as part of “Punch Up” story trivia?
Bonus! We have a special guest host: Ellie Dvorkin Dunn, “aMuse” storyteller, anthology contributor, and co-host of Circling the Drain, a Perimenopausal Podcast About the Period Before You Stop Getting Your Period. Learn more about Ellie below and see you at the show! Click here to RSVP via FB.
Ellie Dvorkin Dunn is an entertainer/writer/host who has been hailed as “outrageous” by The New York Times and “ready for prime time” by The New York Post. Her storytelling has been featured in shows such as Risk!, Generation Women, and No, YOU Tell It!, and her writing has been published in Dame Magazine and the soon-to-be-released book Moms Who Kill, a collection of essays by comedians who also happen to be mothers. Her most recent project is co-producing Circling the Drain, a Perimenopausal Podcast About the Period Before You Stop Getting Your Period. Please listen and subscribe!
In celebration of our 10th year, we’re continuing to build community by inviting No, YOU Tell It! alums back as guest story coaches and directors. We want our diverse alumni to step into the mentorship roles they benefited from to help guide new storytellers.
Meet Pichchenda Bao, who participated in our first evening of poets swapping with stand-ups #BKBF Bookend Event at The Astoria Bookshop in 2019. Give a listen to her story swap with comedian Carolyn Castiglia.
We’re honored to have Pichchenda return as a “Punch Up” story coach at our first story meeting this week to provide her insights as a poet who left her comfort zone to write and perform prose with No, YOU Tell It!
Photo credit: Mengwen Cao
Pichchenda Bao is a Cambodian American writer and poet, infant survivor of the Khmer Rouge regime, daughter of refugees, and feminist stay-at-home mother in New York City. Her work has been featured in numerous publications, exhibitions and events. She has received support from the Queens Council on the Arts and Bethany Arts Community. She is a 2022 Kundiman poetry fellow and a 2019 Aspen Words emerging writer fellow. Read her work at pichchendabao.com.
See you at Culture Lab, LIC on 9/26 for the show! RSVP via Facebook or email us at noyoutellit@gmail.com.
Save the date! We’re BACK for another #BKBF Bookend Event. Four storytellers who write for the page and the stage have worked together to develop true tales inspired by the theme “Punch Up.” Come watch as they step into each other’s stories.
With guest story coach, Pichchenda Bao and guest director and host, Ellie Dvorkin Dunn! Both are alum storytellers from our 2019 BKBF Bookend Event, No, YOU Tell It! “aMuse.”
Storytellers (pictured left to right): Jenn Wehrung, Aida Zilelian, Matt Storrs, and Maria Rubio
