Blaise Allysen Kearsley's How I Learned series features writers, storytellers, comics, and other raconteurs holding forth on lessons learned, unlearned, relearned or in progress. The How I Learned Series happens once a month, and sometimes more than that, which basically means you will have the best night of your life on those nights, repeatedly.
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| Photo: Jesse Chan-Norris |
ELNA BAKER is a writer, storyteller, monologist and the author of The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance. She is a regular contributor for This American Life and has told stories for The Moth, Studio 360, RISK!, Radiolab and BBC Radio 4. Elna has also written for ELLE, Glamour and The Onion, among others.
TARA CLANCY has most recently written for The New York Times and The Rumpus.She has also written and performed several full length monologues, including Channel Rat, which ran at the NY Fringe Festival. A native New Yorker and third-generation bartender, Tara is a licensed tour guide for the City of New York. She lives in Manhattan with her wife and son.
JULIET HOPE WAYNE was named Best Comedian in Philadelphia in 2012 byPhiladelphia Magazine. She was the first female to win the Moth GrandSLAM in New York City and has been featured on the Moth Podcast, Moth Radio Hour on PRX, and toured with The Unchained Tour in 2010. She received her undergraduate degree in Animation and was recently nominated for the 2013 PEW Arts and Culture Fellowship.
JAMES BRALY is the author and performer of the monologue Life in a Marital Institution, reviewed as "gaspingly funny" by Variety and "never less than excellent" by the New York Times. The monologue has become a memoir by the same name, published by St. Martin's Press, and has also been optioned for film and television. His stories have been broadcast nationally on This American Life, NPR and Marketplace. 
ROSE SURNOW used to be a tiny baby, but then she was like, "F@#$ that." Now she's a performer and humorist whose writing has appeared in New York magazine, VICE, Jezebel, The Hairpin, Thought Catalog and elsewhere. She is 9 feet tall and weighs 6 pounds.
CHRISTINE GENTRY joins BBQ on the short list of good things to come out of Texas. A high school English teacher at heart, she currently teaches creative writing and oral storytelling to NYC public school students while getting her Ph.D. Christine has performed at The Moth, The Story Collider, and The Adam Wade From New Hampshire Show, and her short stories have been published in Word Riot, Flashquake, and Printer's Devil Review magazines.
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| L to R: TAYLOR NEGRON, ELIOT GLAZER, JACKIE MANCINI, TRACY ROWLAND, BLAISE ALLYSEN KEARSLEY |
TAYLOR NEGRON, actor, writer. stand-up comic. (Curb Your Enthusiasm, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, The Aristocrats)
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| BRADY DALE, writer, storyteller, and creator of the webcomic Eat The Babies, and the storytelling podcast The World Exists. |
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| JESSICA GROSE, author of Sad Desk Salad and columnist for the New York Times blog Motherlode. |
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| ELIOT GLAZER, creator of the web series It Gets Betterish and Eliot's Sketchpad, and best friend JACKIE MANCINI, associate editor at Guyspeed and longtime contributor for xoJane. |
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| Writer, storyteller and producer / host of How I Learned, BLAISE ALLYSEN KEARSLEY |
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| TV editor and storyteller (The Moth GrandSLAM, The Liar Show), TRACY ROWLAND |
TAYLOR NEGRON is a writer, actor and stand-up comedian. His TV appearances include Curb Your Enthusiasm, Reno 911, Seinfeld and many others. He has also appeared in numerous movies including The Aristocrats, Fast Times at Ridgemont High and The Last Boy Scout. Taylor wrote and performed the solo show The Unbearable Lightness of Being Taylor Negron, which ran at the Edinburgh Comedy Festival, Best of New York Solo Festival at the SoHo Playhouse and at the Barrow Street Theater. His plays include Gangster Planet and Downward Facing Bitch. He is one of the original members of Un-Cabaret, hailed by the Los Angeles Times as "the mother show of alternative comedy."
JESSICA GROSE is the author of the novel Sad Desk Salad (Wlliam Morrow/HarperCollins) and a columnist for the New York Times blog Motherlode. She has also written for Slate, Jezebel, New York Magazine and many other publications. She is the co-author, with Doree Shafrir, of Love, Mom: Poignant, Goofy, Brilliant Messages From Home based on the blog Postcards From Yo Momma.
BRADY DALE worked as a progressive community organizer for over a decade before quitting his job to pursue writing and performance. He performs stories in and around New York and Philadelphia, including at First Person Arts and Philadelphia Improv Theater. He is the creator of the webcomic Eat The Babies and a roundtable storytelling podcast called The World Exists. Brady is also the author of the ebook Dream Her Back: Two Sci-Fi Breakup Novellas.
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| KAMBRI CREWS, author of Burn Down The Ground, on smuggling gum in to a prison where her deaf father was incarcerated. |
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| Storyteller and writer for the United Nations, ELICIA BERGER waxes off on her awkward excursion to a Buddhist monastery. |
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| Here's me in my anniversary tiara saying something that at least KATHERINE LANPHER thinks is funny. That's How I Learned Assistant Producer LYRA SMITH behind me, also in a tiara. |
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| Some people in the audience (like that guy in the background) wore bright blue party hats for the anniversary because LYRA asked them to and she was kind of a bully about it. Don't mess with Texas. Or wherever she's from. Nashville, I think. |
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| DAVID CRABB, writer, storyteller, co-creator of Ask Me Stories and sometime host of The Moth, tells a true tale he describes as "kind of gothy, Halloweeny." That's what I like to hear. Plus, he brought me flowers, so yeah. |
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| Writer and performer TED TRAVELSTEAD talks about a (fake) novel called My Donkey, excerpted from his new book, The Petraeus Files: All the Photos, Chats, Poems, and Other Super-Secret Emails They Don't Want You To See. The book My Donkey is a book for children that's highly inappropriate for children. |
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| In honor of How I Learned's 4th anniversary, KATHERINE LANPHER--journalist, broadcaster, author and host extraordinaire--told a story about throwing her parents a party for their 60th wedding anniversary. Committed to the bit, she wore a vintage apron. |
Blaise Allysen Kearsley is a writer and storyteller, as well as the creator, producer and host of the How I Learned series, and she also does some other stuff, too. She's appeared on The Rejection Show, The Liar Show, The Soundtrack Series, Real Characters, The Story Collider, Steamboat, Mortified, Cringe, Literary Death Match and elsewhere. Her writing has been published in The Nervous Breakdown, Vice Magazine, a couple of anthologies, and several other places a long time ago that are perhaps not worth mentioning by name. One time, she was awarded a writing residency in Vermont where she got electrocuted and maybe almost killed a horse. Visit her at your own risk at www.bazima.com
Photo: Lou Noble