In an amazing deep dive into more than 653 sources, Dr. Brian Sturm examines the art of telling stories, citing both research and experiential accounts, with special attention to the storytelling trance. Concluding chapters suggest applications for tellers. The book is especially useful for its research suggesting the ways oral storytelling functions.

Margaret Read MacDonald, Folklorist, Author, Storyteller, USA

This is a comprehensive exploration of storytelling as immersion, with an inclusive and lucidly organized overview of related literature. Ideas easily move between theory and practice, with chapters that range, for example, from conceptual explorations of the storytelling trance experience to practical resources for finding stories. There is a warmth in the writing, so that it reads like a lecture from a favorite professor while at the same time supporting targeted reading for specific applications, such as immersion in libraries. Immersive Oral Storytelling is a timely contribution to a moment of increasing resistances to and refusals of machine-driven averaging or outright theft of human cultural creativity. This is a wonderful book for scholars of information and practitioners of storytelling alike.

Kate McDowell, School of Information Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, USA

Brian Sturm has compiled an extraordinary collection of thoughts and opinions related to the story-listening trance. He traces commentary from Aristotle to this decade, including studies of immersion in the reading process as well as in video games and illustrated novels. I trust this comprehensive literature review will serve as an excellent starting point for future research.

Fran Stallings, storyteller, USA