Jessamine County Kentucky More Tales Storytelling Festival
Some festivals are built around noise, rides and flashing lights. This one is built around a voice, a listener and a well-told story. The More Tales Storytelling Festival brings tellers and audiences together in Wilmore, a small Jessamine County town in Kentucky, for a weekend shaped by ghost tales, tall tales and stories told across two days. The published name needs no translation: the county tourism commission’s listing layer and a college newspaper layer both print “More Tales Storytelling Festival” in full, exactly matching the core of the sheet title, while the organiser’s own site and the city newsletter layers use the shorter “More Tales” for the same event. What the record describes is a committee-run storytelling weekend with deep Kentucky roots in the wider storytelling world, documented in detail for two editions, one in September two thousand twenty-four and one in September two thousand twenty-six, with city and tourism layers corroborating the picture around them.
About the Festival
More Tales is a storytelling festival in Wilmore, in Jessamine County, Kentucky. Wilmore hosts the event but does not hold the county’s seat of government; reference layers place the Jessamine County seat at Nicholasville, and the article keeps that distinction because travellers often assume the host town and the seat are the same place. The organiser named across the record is the More Tales committee. A college newspaper layer adds individual depth to that committee form by naming Ed Bryson as a founder of More Tales and as co-founder and committee chair of the festival, and he is carried here in exactly that documented founding role, with no other individual named in an organiser capacity. The venue printed in the record is the Dan Glass Pavilion in Wilmore, named by the college newspaper layer in its account of the two thousand twenty-four edition. The organiser’s own site presents the event under the short form More Tales and prints storyteller and contact details, which are noted here by existence only. The county tourism commission’s listing layer carries the full published name, and the city government’s newsletter calendar later lists the festival by that full name for its two thousand twenty-six dates. The record supporting all of this is moderate to thick rather than thin: two editions are fully particularised, the two thousand twenty-four weekend by the college newspaper layer and the two thousand twenty-six weekend by the magazine and blog layer, while the city newsletter layers and the tourism commission’s listing corroborate the event’s place in Wilmore’s calendar from their own angles.
Quick Facts
| Item | Detail |
| Published name | More Tales Storytelling Festival |
| Short form | More Tales |
| Host town | Wilmore, Kentucky |
| County | Jessamine County |
| County seat | Nicholasville, not Wilmore |
| Documented venue | Dan Glass Pavilion, Wilmore, per a college newspaper layer for two thousand twenty-four |
| Organiser | The More Tales committee |
| Documented founder | Ed Bryson, founder, co-founder and committee chair per a college newspaper layer |
| Documented editions | September two thousand twenty-four and the eighteenth to the nineteenth of September two thousand twenty-six |
| Admission | Free for the two thousand twenty-six edition, per a local magazine and blog layer |
History and Background
The honest starting point for the history of More Tales is a billing rather than a date of birth. The college newspaper layer describes the September two thousand twenty-four weekend as the seventh annual edition, and that phrase is recorded throughout this article as a billing only. Nothing here converts the seventh annual billing into a founding year, because the layers consulted never state a founding year in words, and arithmetic built on a billing would be invention rather than research. What the record does offer is a founder’s own account of how the storytelling life began for one of the people behind the festival. In the blog layer’s telling, a founder attended his first storytelling event in nineteen eighty-three at Louisville’s Corn Island Storytelling Festival. That memory belongs to the founder’s personal history as the blog layer records it; it is not a founding date for More Tales, and it is not treated as one. Other storytelling gatherings appear in the record strictly as background. The Corn Island Storytelling Festival in Louisville, the Cave Run Storytelling Festival and Tennessee’s Jonesborough festival are different events, mentioned around this record rather than within it, and none of their details are imported into this festival’s story.
What to Expect
A seat at More Tales means settling in for told stories across two days, and the two documented editions show the shape of the weekend from different angles. The college newspaper layer’s account of September two thousand twenty-four describes a festival weekend at the Dan Glass Pavilion with storytellers drawn from West Virginia, South Carolina, New York and Kentucky, among them Dr. Heather Forrest and Adam Booth, carried here as that layer names them, as documented tellers. That weekend also carried the first annual Tall Tales Contest, giving competitive exaggeration a formal place on the programme. The two thousand twenty-six edition, as a local magazine and blog layer documents it, leans into the evening hours: Friday night is given to ghost tales running from half past six to nine in the evening, and Saturday becomes a full day of storytelling from ten in the morning to nine in the evening, with food trucks on site and a tall tales contest returning to the bill. Visitors should therefore picture an audience-centred event rather than a fairground: listening sessions, a contest built on inventive lying told well, food handled by trucks on the Saturday, and a Friday night deliberately set aside for the eerie end of the storytelling tradition. The two editions also complement each other as evidence. Where the two thousand twenty-four account emphasises who came to tell, naming tellers from four states, the two thousand twenty-six account emphasises how the hours are arranged, moving from Friday ghost tales into a Saturday that stretches from morning to night. Together they describe a festival whose core is consistent even as the documented detail shifts from cast to timetable.
Planning Your Visit
The firmest dates in the record belong to the two thousand twenty-six edition: Friday the eighteenth and Saturday the nineteenth of September, listed by that full name on the city government’s newsletter calendar. Anyone planning around those dates can build the trip on the hours the magazine and blog layer documents, with ghost tales on the Friday night from half past six to nine in the evening and storytelling on the Saturday from ten in the morning through to nine in the evening. Admission to that edition is stated as free by the same magazine and blog layer, and no price appears in any layer consulted, so the documented position is a free two thousand twenty-six weekend rather than a ticketed one. The documented venue in the record is the Dan Glass Pavilion in Wilmore, named for the two thousand twenty-four edition, so checking the organiser’s own site before travelling is a sensible step, since that site prints the storyteller and contact details for the event. Wilmore is a small town, and Nicholasville, the county seat, sits within the same county for wider services, which makes basing a visit in either place straightforward.
For a useful comparison, see the Jessamine County Kentucky Wilmore Arts and Crafts Festival for another county festival.
A Sample Itinerary
Friday evening is the natural arrival point for this festival. Reach Wilmore with time to settle before half past six, when the documented ghost tales begin, and give the full session until nine in the evening to a darkening pavilion crowd and stories chosen for the night hours. Saturday then carries the weight of the weekend: the documented storytelling runs from ten in the morning to nine in the evening, so a patient listener can plan the day in blocks, stepping out to the food trucks between sessions rather than leaving the site for meals. The tall tales contest belongs somewhere in that Saturday frame, and it rewards an audience that has spent the day learning how the tellers build a story, because the contest turns that craft toward cheerful falsehood. Anyone who attended the two thousand twenty-four edition for comparison would have found the pavilion weekend built around visiting tellers from four states and the first running of that same contest.
How It Compares
Within Wilmore’s own calendar, More Tales occupies a different corner from the town’s craft and music gatherings, because its entire programme rests on the spoken word rather than on stalls or stages of instruments. Against its own documented editions, the comparison is one of emphasis: two thousand twenty-four is the edition remembered in the record for its travelling tellers and the debut of the contest, while two thousand twenty-six is the edition whose hours are spelled out most precisely, split between a ghost-tale Friday and a long storytelling Saturday. Against the wider storytelling world named in the background of the record, including the Louisville and Tennessee gatherings, More Tales reads as the local, committee-run expression of the same tradition, smaller in documented footprint and rooted in one pavilion in Wilmore.
Visitor Checklist
- Confirm the current dates and venue through the organiser’s own site before travelling
- Keep Friday evening free for the ghost tales session
- Set aside the full Saturday, from morning to evening, for storytelling
- Allow time between sessions for the food trucks on the Saturday
- Stay for the tall tales contest rather than treating it as a side act
- Note that admission for the two thousand twenty-six edition is documented as free
- Remember that Wilmore is the host town and Nicholasville is the county seat
- Check the organiser’s printed storyteller details when planning which sessions to catch
Beyond the Festival
A storytelling weekend gives a visitor a particular way into Wilmore. The town hosts the festival without being the county seat, and that small distinction shapes a trip: the pavilion sessions anchor the visit, while Nicholasville, a short county journey away in practical terms, carries the seat’s civic role. Jessamine County itself is the wider frame, a county whose tourism commission lists this festival among its named events, which says something about the place storytelling holds in the county’s calendar. A visitor with time around the sessions can treat the weekend as two experiences at once, the concentrated listening of the festival itself and the quieter small-town setting that surrounds it, with the county seat available for the errands and services a host village may not concentrate in one place.
Why It Matters
More Tales matters in the record because it shows a traditional art form holding a documented place in a small county’s calendar. The festival is run by a named committee, founded in part by a man whose own storytelling life, by his account in the blog layer, reaches back to a Louisville festival in nineteen eighty-three, and it draws tellers across state lines, as the two thousand twenty-four weekend did with visitors from West Virginia, South Carolina, New York and Kentucky. A first annual Tall Tales Contest in that edition, still present in the two thousand twenty-six programme, shows the event building its own traditions rather than merely borrowing them. Free admission for the two thousand twenty-six edition, as the magazine and blog layer states it, keeps that tradition open to anyone willing to sit down and listen. There is also a quieter significance in how the record itself was assembled: a college newspaper, a local magazine and blog, city newsletters and a county tourism listing each carried a piece of the story, which is how a small committee festival leaves a traceable public footprint without becoming a large commercial production.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which visiting tellers are named for the two thousand twenty-four weekend?
The college newspaper layer names storytellers from West Virginia, South Carolina, New York and Kentucky for that weekend, and among them it names Dr. Heather Forrest and Adam Booth, who are carried in this article exactly as that layer presents them.
What fills the Friday night of the two thousand twenty-six edition?
A local magazine and blog layer documents ghost tales on the Friday night, running from half past six to nine in the evening, before the full Saturday of storytelling that follows from ten in the morning to nine in the evening.
Who runs More Tales, and whose name is attached to its founding?
The organiser carried through the record is the More Tales committee. A college newspaper layer names Ed Bryson as a founder of More Tales and as co-founder and committee chair of the festival, and he appears here in that documented role only.
Was a two thousand twenty-five edition part of the record?
The college newspaper layer noted, alongside its two thousand twenty-four account, that the two thousand twenty-five edition was set for the nineteenth to the twentieth of September. That is recorded as the plan that layer published, and the fullest particulars in the record belong to the two thousand twenty-four and two thousand twenty-six editions.
What to Expect From the Next Jessamine County Kentucky More Tales Storytelling Festival
How often is Jessamine County Kentucky More Tales Storytelling Festival held?
The record presents More Tales as an annual storytelling festival, with the two thousand twenty-four weekend billed as the seventh annual edition and dated editions documented for September two thousand twenty-four and September two thousand twenty-six. The billing is recorded as printed, and no founding year is worked out from it.
When is the next Jessamine County Kentucky More Tales Storytelling Festival?
The latest dated edition documented in the record is the weekend of the eighteenth to the nineteenth of September two thousand twenty-six, listed on the city government’s newsletter calendar with its programme hours described by the magazine and blog layer. Beyond that weekend, the layers consulted carry the earlier note of a two thousand twenty-five edition set for the nineteenth to the twentieth of September, and no further date is stated in them.
Will the dates change?
September is the month every dated reference in the record points to, from the two thousand twenty-four weekend to the two thousand twenty-six listing, and the two thousand twenty-five plan noted by the college newspaper layer also sat in September. Whether a future committee keeps precisely to that pattern is something only its own later listings can confirm.
Closing Notes
More Tales is, on the documented record, a small festival with a long memory: a committee-run storytelling weekend in Wilmore, billed as the seventh annual by two thousand twenty-four, carried by tellers from four states that year, and set out most precisely in two thousand twenty-six as a free weekend of ghost tales, a long Saturday of stories and a tall tales contest. Its record asks to be read carefully, with billings kept as billings and a founder’s nineteen eighty-three memory kept as his own, and read that way it gives the county a distinctive festival.
