The popular Texas Public Radio live storytelling series “Worth Repeating” has moved from the stage to the page, with a new collection of 40 stories published in book form as Worth Repeating: San Antonio Stories by Trinity University Press.
Burgin Streetman, the press’s assistant director and a co-editor of the 220-page book, knew almost from the beginning that the “Worth Repeating” live storytelling series would one day become a book.
Streetman participated during the series’s second year in 2016, one of seven speakers onstage telling seven-minute stories of their lives, from childhood misadventures to fantastical tales of mythical creatures.
The South Carolina backcountry native told a story of her mother bringing her along to search for a supposed man buried alive in the town landfill. The adventure turns harrowing when shots were fired in the direction of the young girl and her intrepid mother. Titled “Buried Alive,” the short essay begins, “The first time I thought I was going to die, I was 12 years old.”
Streetman’s tale is typical of most “Worth Repeating” stories, in that they tend to be the kinds of stories people tell each other at social gatherings, recounting remarkable things that have happened to them.
“They’re just regular, everyday people’s stories, where something extraordinary or something poignant happened in their lives,” she said.
The series began in 2015 at the suggestion of Paul Flahive, a co-editor who describes it as “a rip-off of a rip-off,” having been modeled after several existing live storytelling series, of which New York-based “The Moth” is perhaps best known.
In his introduction, Flahive describes the range of stories of “Worth Repeating” as “Vulnerable stories of loss and pain and grief. Funny stories of mistakes.”
Notable San Antonians included in the collection are author John Phillip Santos, artist Alex Rubio, San Antonio Current writer and editor Sanford Nowlin, San Antonio Report photojournalist Bria Woods, poets Eddie Vega, Sheila Black and Norma Elia Cantú.
Communion author and former San Antonian Whitley Strieber accepted Streetman’s invitation and flew in to tell his tale, included as “Fake Heads and Wonder,” of first seeing stars through Aline Maverick Carter’s rooftop observatory downtown.
Vanessa Martinez attended the very first Worth Repeating, held in 2015 at the Geekdom Event Center. She soon pitched her own story, “The Neighborhood of My Childhood.” Though the title sounds mundane, even nostalgic, Martinez tells of her house featuring in the 1977 Hollywood movie Rolling Thunder, which starred Tommie Lee Jones and inspired such luminaries as Quentin Tarantino.
Without giving too much away, a pair of French doors were removed from the home by one of the film’s production staff, and her parents went to great lengths to have the doors retrieved. Martinez weaves that fact into a multigenerational portrait of her beloved Highland Park working-class neighborhood on San Antonio’s near East Side.
“It’s just those unique touches that make those older homes representative of the neighborhood … that I felt an importance to preserve,” she said. “When someone comes in and they flip the house, and they don’t keep those things, it loses history. I thought it would be nice to remind people that those things are special.”
After participating as a storyteller, Martinez joined the “Worth Repeating” storyboard, the group that works behind the scenes to produce the event.
“Even though San Antonio is majority Latino, there’s a lot of people that don’t listen to TPR,” she said. “So I tried to bring a little bit of diversity to the storytelling board, and I think that we’ve gotten there,” Martinez said, crediting producer Tori Poole with carrying on the focus on diversity after taking over from Flahive in 2020.
Worth Repeating: San Antonio Stories will be released Aug. 15 with a free event from 6-9 p.m. at the Irma and Emilio Media Center on West Commerce Street featuring readings, music and refreshments.
Other upcoming events centered on promoting the book include Food For Thought at Carriqui on Sept. 12, and readings with authors at Nowhere Bookshop on Sept. 15, Twig Book Shop Sept. 22, and the Maverick Book Club on the Trinity University campus on Sept. 27.
