High Knob Outdoor Fest (Aug. 9-16, 2025) is a weeklong celebration of the region’s abundant outdoor adventures; offering trips, activities, and presentations focused on getting more people outside.

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Appalachian storyteller and artist Angelyn DeBord will lead a storytelling workshop open to ages 12+ during High Knob Outdoor Fest. With opportunities to share family stories and delve into folk tales from the region, the workshop is shaped around providing a sense of safety in sharing your stories and using your voice in a comfortable way. Everyone’s voice will be heard.

 

Angelyn DeBord and ETSU Assistant Professor & Storytelling Program Head Nancy Donoval will give a public storytelling performance during High Knob Outdoor Fest. The performance is free and open to all. 

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Registration for both events is encouraged. Contact (276) 679-3103 or destinationcenter@nortonva.org to register.

 

Born and raised in western North Carolina, Angelyn DeBord grew up in the midst of multi-generations of her extended family. It is this family that she credits for the inspiration for her 40-year career as a playwright, visual artist, performing artist and workshop leader. A founding member of Appalshop’s Roadside Theater, her theater workshops have led young and old alike to successfully create and perform original material on stages throughout America and in England. Among her performance venues are Lincoln Center, Kennedy Center and Los Angeles Center for the Arts. Her work reflects a life-long commitment to encouraging people to honor their unique voices and heritages.  DeBord was a recipient of a Rockefeller Humanities Arts and Activism Fellowship to research and publish Telling Your Own Story, a story illumination project.  Her story sharing workshops have focused on underserved areas of the United States. She has conducted workshops in jails and in women's shelters, with teens-at-risk, senior citizens, minorities, and addicts. In her workshops, participants are encouraged to explore the dramatic elements inherent within their own memories and impressions, and to magnify their personal stories into a staged production of tandem storytelling. Angelyn is also a Licensed Professional Counselor and a Registered Play Therapist.

 

Nancy Donoval won the 2024 Moth GrandSLAM in Asheville (theme of Uncharted Territory) and the 2022 GrandSLAM in the Twin Cities, MN (theme of Great Escapes). She has 35+ years as a freelance storyteller and consultant, including everything from helping lawyers craft opening statements to telling ghost stories on junior high hayrides using a bullhorn. Featured at the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, TN in 2004, Nancy received the National Storytelling Network Circle of Excellence Oracle Award in 2019. She has taught storytelling courses at the university level since 1995, first at Northwestern University School of Continuing Education, then for Metropolitan State University in Minneapolis/St. Paul, and now in the Storytelling Program in East Tennessee State University’s Department of Communication Studies and Storytelling, where she is currently Program Director. She is co-author, with Loren Niemi, of “Point of View and the Emotional Arc of Stories: a Handbook for Writers and Storytellers”.​​

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We're proud to be a co-sponsor of High Knob Outdoor Festival and, alongside our partners at the City of Norton, participate in the local arts traditions of our region. Find the full festival schedule at highknoboutdoorfest.com.

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Pro-Art partners with a variety of venues, for accessibility inquiries or general questions, call (276) 376-4520 or email contact@proartva.org. For weather related updates, patrons are encouraged to check proartva.org for real-time information.

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Pro-Art is supported in part by the Virginia Commission for the Arts, which receives support from the Virginia General Assembly and the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as the C. Bascom Slemp Foundation, The University of Virginia’s College at Wise, and Mountain Empire Community College.​​