Mack Swift is Top Tale Teller
When it comes to being the best teller of tall tales, at least here in Virginia, look no further than BRCC’s own Mack Swift. In the spring, he won the Second Annual Virginia Tall Tale Contest, sponsored by the Virginia Storytelling Alliance. “It’s really just a disguised liar’s contest,” Swift says with a wink. “You know they’ve had a Liar’s Contest in West Virginia for many years, but we have to call it something a little classier here in Virginia!”
Nine finalists from all over the state told their tales, wove their stories, and spun their yarns, and Swift’s story called “Uncle Berk’s Flat Farm” was judged the best, and the grand prize golden shovel and all the bragging rights were his. “I believe we even let a North Carolinian come and tell a story,” says Swift, who has been a professional storyteller for 35 years.
“I come from a storytelling family,” he says. “It’s a tradition to pass down these stories. Before television and computers and all that, that’s what we did. We sat around and told funny stories.”
Swift uses his musical talents with the guitar, ukulele, and harmonica, as well as his ability to speak in different dialects and voices, to make these Appalachian tales and “Jack” tales come alive. He says that many of these stories are familiar to most of us as Grimm’s fairy tales, but with an American twist. “People told these stories in their homelands, but when they came here and settled in the hills, they started being retold in light of their new surroundings,” Swift notes.
Along with his wife Joan, also a BRCC instructor of English, he can be found delighting children and adults with tales in tandem at schools and libraries. They’ve been participants in the “Tellabration”—a worldwide night of storytelling held in November ”— and the International Storytelling Festival in Jonesboro, TN for decades. “The Jonesboro event draws about 14,000 people and you can go from big tent to big tent listening to the some of the best storytellers in the world,” says Swift.
Swift’s love of and prowess with storytelling blends nicely with his teaching of history. “Mainly what I do is approach the whole thing as telling a story,” he says. “Most people respond very well to being told a story. When you think of the speakers that you really enjoy listening to, they are really storytellers.”
With storytelling guilds in every state and a thriving national organization, Swift hopes that storytelling is not a dying art. Storytelling has recently been added to high school forensics competitions, so it is getting recognition by young people who want to perfect their storytelling style.
“Everyone has his own style,” notes Swift. “You can be yourself, tell your stories your way, and still be successful.”
