True story lovers are my people. My best friends are story lovers. As are lots of acquaintances I want to be my friends, and strangers I want to become acquaintances. We have our noses in a book as often as we can. We share and look for recommendations and discuss great books and wonder what’s wrong with the folks who don’t.

We listen to radio and podcasts that tell true stories and give a look into lives that resonate with ours through the intimacy of the human voice speaking to us.

We consume long-form stories like a dessert to be savored. Memoir, essays, narrative nonfiction, and radio and podcasts with a storyline. Anything with a storyline that is true is the stuff we crave. What keeps us riveted are tales of a real person’s life. We want to know what it’s like to be them. In the best ones we’re inspired to live better or connect with someone else. Or feel less alone.

True storytellers are also my people. We see stories everywhere. We craft them, long to write them and produce them, and love telling them to impact the story lovers.

We create.

To be read and listened to.

To make a little art. To inspire or change or move hearts.

We can be geeks ad infinitum about story structure, and the craft of the telling, which can make us a little odd. A conversation with likeminded storytellers where we can talk about it with people who care, is a joy like candy to a three year old.

And we’ve got to stick together because creating something that didn’t exist before (a book, a radio piece, a documentary, an article, a soufflé) is no easy-bake cake. It’s sometimes crazy hard. But we can’t not do it.

Drop by story drop we can change a speck of the world. Or lots of the world. Or reach one person.

Go read stories.

Go hear stories.

Go make stories.

The world needs you.