Recommended Reading
The inspiration behind All Things Narrative began years ago when I read: A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life by Donald Miller. If you want to learn more about the ideas that inspire us, start here.
A little while later, I read what would become the inspiration for my Live A Meaningful Story program: Finding God in the Graffiti: Empowering Teenagers Through Stories by Frank Rogers Jr. If you work with youth in any way, and want to better engage them through the arts, this is the book for you!
Next, I’d recommend 2 other phenomenal books about storytelling, one classic and one modern: I frequently reference The Hero With a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell on my podcast due to its prevailing influence on the way we tell stories (think the Hero’s Journey); and Jonathan Gottschall’s The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human is comprehensive in explaining why stories matter so much to us.
If you want to dive deeper into storytelling after reading these, check out Carol Pearson’s wonderful book on archetypes What Stories Are You Living? Additionally, Rene Girard’s I See Satan Fall Like Lightening is a comparative study between mythology and the Bible, examining how certain patterns in stories (like scapegoating) manifest in our world.
If you’re interested in learning more about Narrative Therapy Practices, I’d recommend starting with What Is Narrative Therapy?: An Easy-to-Read Introduction by Alice Morgan. Then, it all depends on whether you want to learn more about Narrative Practice in one-on-one conversations (Maps of Narrative Practice by Michael White) or with groups and communities (Collective Narrative Practice by David Denborough). If you want a book integral to the development of Narrative Therapy, check out Narrative Means to Therapeutic Ends by Michael White and David Epston (particularly Chapter 1). Jonathan Stillman’s The Narrative Journey: An Illustrated Guide to Narrative Therapy Principles is another concise and practical guide that is very influential in our Live A Meaningful Story program. To learn more about the intersection between Narrative Therapy and Christianity, check out Interweavings: Conversations Between Narrative Therapy and Christian Faith by Richard Cook and Irene Alexander. And of course, I cannot recommend enough David Denborough’s Retelling the Stories of Our Lives: Everyday Narrative Therapy to Draw Inspiration and Transform Experience.
A couple other good pieces on the importance of telling your story include the “Prologue” of Confessions of a Christian Humanist by John W. de Gruchy, and Chapter 17 in Spider-Man and Philosophy (Jonathan Stanford) called “Spider-Man and the Importance of Getting Your Story Straight”. I’d also recommend reading about Barbara Myerhoff’s work with Jewish elders and Aunty Barbara Wingard’s Telling Our Stories in Ways That Make Us Stronger.
A couple examples of telling your story in ways that inspire others and yourself to live a meaningful story include: Confessions by Saint Augustine (even if you’re not religious, it’s basically the first autobiography, and quite a beautiful read) and The Color Purple by Alice Walker (a powerful work of fiction in which you get an intimate look into both the stories the protagonist tells about herself and the stories she tells to herself about who she is).
And finally, if you want to become a better storyteller, start reading more of your favorite stories, whether they be works of fiction or nonfiction. There’s always something to learn from every kind of story, even if it’s what not to do.