Learn to craft and tell stories that resonate.
🗓 8 classes from January 15 to March 26, 2026. (No class Jan 29; Feb 26; March 5). As our final class, we will share our stories in an open-mic style performance for an audience of family and friends.
🗣️Taught by Ulysses Chuang
🕰 Thursdays 6:30 pm - 8:30 pm
🗺 Merlin's Place, Bushwick, Brooklyn
💰 Sliding scale of $135-$700
📋 Application: please apply for the course here
👥 Class limited to 18 students
I think of storytelling as one of the most basic social skills we have, and one that most of us were never taught explicitly.
We tell stories to make ourselves legible to others. We listen to stories to understand who someone is, what they care about, and how they move through the world. Over time, stories become social glue: they build trust and create a shared sense of reality.
This course is an opportunity to practice that craft deliberately: to learn how to tell personal stories that are engaging and worth listening to.
When we listen to a friend’s story, we’re offering them something precious: our attention. We agree, for a few minutes, to see the world through their eyes. Conversely, as storytellers, we owe our listeners the courtesy of telling a story that respects that attention, one that doesn’t ramble or confuse.
This is why I wanted to create a structured space to practice storytelling together.
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By the end of the course, you can expect to: • Develop a portfolio of five to seven personal stories, each no longer than about seven minutes. (If you have a truly epic story, we can work with it as a sequence of shorter acts.) • Have a menu of stories you can reliably draw from in social settings. (“Would you like to hear about the time I took peyote in the woods?” “Or the time I down-climbed into a cave and encountered 800-year-old petroglyphs?”) • Feel more at ease telling stories to a group, with your voice, facial expressions, and body language fully involved. • Gain confidence in tracking how a story is landing — noticing when listeners lean in, laugh, or grow curious, and learning how to respond in the moment.
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