Linda Goss was born into a storytelling family in Alcoa, Tenn. Her grandfather was a superb spinner of tales, followed by both of her parents. Goss is an award-winning storyteller and author in Philadelphia, and with Mary Carter Smith of Baltimore founded the National Association of Black Storytellers.
In her own voice, Linda tells of her storytelling origins and the people who influenced her:
I was raised on storytelling. It comes out of my being and my birth. I was born into a storytelling family, a family who quilted, who cooked, who preached, who could sing, who could dance and who could tell stories. My mother was a public speaker and she was very formal. She wrote her speeches and she was very precise and spoke very well. She would tell me stories and so would my father.
Born in the 1940s in the foothills of the Smoky Mountains in Alcoa, Tennessee, Linda Goss has gathered a repertoire of stories throughout her life – from her East Tennessee home, to Washington, DC, where she became a social activist in the 1960s at Howard University, and later as a longtime resident of Philadelphia. A founder of the National Association of Black Storytellers with Baltimore’s late, iconic storyteller, Mother Mary Carter Smith, Linda Goss now lives in Baltimore and is the nation’s foremost African-American storyteller. She teaches life lessons to her audiences through family stories, folktales, call and response techniques, clapping, songs and poetry. From a young age, Linda attentively listened and learned from her story-telling family, and as she grew older she joined in with the Black arts movement in college. Linda is joined at the 2014 Maryland Traditions Folklife Festival with her dedicated apprentice, Diane Macklin, an accomplished storyteller from Baltimore, and multi-instrumentalist Papa Ed Stokes of Philadelphia.
Location:
Baltimore City
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