Do you have a science story you’re dying to share? Are you looking to sharpen your science storytelling skills with supportive feedback from expert performers and science communicators? Or maybe you’d just like to hang out with the Story Collider gang on a Thursday night and enjoy some new and original stories?

If so, join us for our first-ever science story slam! Our community of storytellers offers a warm, supportive environment in which storytellers of all backgrounds and levels of experience can experiment (pun not intended!) with personal narrative. Since this is our first slam, this month's theme is FIRSTS.

If you’re interested in telling a story, you’ll have the opportunity to put your name in the virtual hat at the start of the show.  Five lucky storytellers will get the opportunity to share their stories on screen. (For more guidance on telling a story at one of our slams, see our advice at the bottom of this page.)  If you would prefer just to be a part of the audience, that’s fine too!

Our two coaches -- representing expertise in both story performance and science communication -- will offer each storyteller advice and encouragement to help them bring out the best in their stories.

Liz Neeley is the executive director of Story Collider. She started her career studying the color patterns of tropical fish. (It was in fact even better than her childhood dream of working in a crayon factory.) She surprised herself more than anyone when she left the research path and went into ocean conservation and policy. For the past decade, she has been helping scientists around the world tell more compelling stories about their work. Most recently, she helped commission and edit the 2018 series "Stories from the Front Lines" at PLOS Biology. She is a lecturer at Yale in conjunction with the National Neuroscience Curriculum Initiative.

Gastor Almonte is a stand-up comedian and storyteller from Brooklyn, NY. He's appeared on Comedy Central's This Is Not Happening, Risk! podcast and the Story Collider Podcast. Timeout magazine named him one of your "New Comedy Obsessions." He's been featured on the New York Comedy Festival, The People's Impov Theater's SoloCom and Cinderblock Comedy Festival. His new album, Immigrant Made, was released in March 2019.

Erin Barker is the artistic director of Story Collider, as well as a writer and editor, and the first woman to win The Moth's GrandSLAM storytelling competition twice. She has appeared on PRX'sThe Moth Radio Hour, and one of her stories was included in The New York Times-bestselling book The Moth: 50 True Stories.

Stories should be five to six minutes long. (You’ll see a warning flash on screen when you have one minute left.)

Stories should have a beginning, middle, and end, and should involve some kind of personal change, whether it’s big or small.

Your story must be a first-person narrative -- in other words, it must be about you!

Because this is Story Collider, your story should be connected to, or inspired by, science in some way.

Try to have a pair of headphones handy, in case we experience feedback.

If you can, test out your camera and microphone ahead of time, here: https://www.crowdcast.io/setup

If possible, try to make sure you’re in a low-traffic area with minimal ambient noise.

If you’d like to be really thorough, you can find our full setup guide for storytellers here!

Our First Science Story Slam