People & Stories / Gente y Cuentos

People & Stories/Gente y Cuentos (P&S/GyC) is dedicated to opening doors to literature for new audiences. Through oral readings and rigorous discussions of enduring short stories, they invite participants to find fresh understandings of themselves, of others, and of the world. Their programs, offered in English and Spanish, use oral readings and structured dialogues of complex short stories to invite participants to connect their own varied life experiences to the universal themes found in great literature.

Their "Crossing Borders with Literature" program promotes deeper understanding across communities, using literature as an opportunity to stimulate dialogue in groups that cross urban and suburban boundaries. The Writing Our Stories model, offered in English or in Spanish, includes an additional writing component where participants respond to a writing prompt at the end of each session and, at the end of the series, receive an anthology of the group’s writing.

Participants include men and women who are incarcerated or engaged in re-entry, residents in halfway houses and homeless shelters, recent immigrants, and low-income seniors in residential settings.

Their extensive and multicultural bibliography inspires lively, structured dialogues that help readers challenge their assumptions, communicate across cultural, class and ethnic differences, and know first-hand the transformative power of literature.