No, YOU Tell It!: College Try

Storytellers:

As a writer and actor for projects on HBO, Netflix, and MTV, and the creator of the hit storytelling podcast and live show RISK!, now in its 14th year, Kevin Allison is an expert on the power of narrative in communication. Kevin is the editor of the book RISK! True Stories People Never Thought They'd Dare to Share, available from Hachette Books, and the founder of the storytelling school The Story Studio, where he has trained the staffs of businesses such as Google, Pfizer, and Citibank.

Brett Felder was born and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio but has been happily adopted by New York and New Jersey, where she’s spent much of her career in the educational non-profit sector. For the past 15 years, she has managed College Board programs in support of AP expansion for underserved students and, currently, the customer service and test center management operations for the CLEP and ACCUPLACER programs. She served as an Ambassador for the AP African American Studies pilot, collecting feedback about and garnering support for the new course. She is a breast cancer thriver and avid traveler who was recently interviewed on Vented Uplift The Super Power Series by Vented in Brooklyn’s founder, Chrisie Canny, after they connected at the Pink Kickoff for Breast Cancer Awareness Month on Good Morning America. A hibernating multi-hyphenate, Brett is reawakening her creative side and has decided to jump in with both feet to take on the writing and performing challenge that is No, YOU Tell It! Prayers requested.

Cited by Oprah Magazine as “one of our favorite creative thinkers,” Dion Flynn is a writer, keynote speaker, improvisor, comedian, actor, and U.S. Army veteran. He’s best known for playing Barack Obama and other characters, with over 100 appearances on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. If Dave Chapelle and Eckhart Tolle had a son, it would be strange looking — and so is Dion. He’s a master at using fun and innovative ways to help people connect with themselves and others, leading hundreds of business professionals, writers, storytellers, college students, sales people, recovering- and non-recovering folks through his dynamic Improvisor’s Mindset Workshops. www.ImprovisorsMindset.com / www.DionFlynn.com

Najah Imani Muhammad is a Hudson Valley based multi-hyphenate artist and educator. She is the co-host of podcast UnderRepresented Representatives, a space which amplifies the voices of the unheard and gives them a throne. Regardless of the project, Najah’s goal is to use the arts as a communicative tool to bring people together, and start a conversation. After leaving her full-time teaching job, Najah finds ways to stay connected with education through being a teaching artist with Disney Theatrical Group, Beacon Performing Arts Center, and Director of Education for her mother’s non-profit organization, Leaders by Choice. In the past she has worked with programs such as Girl Be Heard, The Leadership Program, and Kaiser’s Room. Follow along her journey @najahknows @underreppedreps @leadersbychoice www.NajahKnows.com

No, YOU Tell It! Creative Team:

Ellie Dvorkin Dunn is an entertainer/writer/host who has been hailed as “outrageous” by The New York Times and “ready for prime time” by The New York Post. Her storytelling has been featured in shows such as RISK!, Generation Women, and No, YOU Tell It!, and like most NYC-based actors, she has been on Law & Order twice. Her most recent project is co-producing and co-hosting Circling the Drain, a Perimenopausal Podcast About the Period Before You Stop Getting Your Period. Please listen and subscribe!

Nicole Shawan Junior (they/them) was bred in the bass-heavy beat and scratch of Brooklyn, where the cool of inner-city life barely survived crack cocaine’s burn. Their work appears in Oprah Daily, Guernica, Zora, Gay Mag, The Feminist Wire, and elsewhere. Nicole has received residencies and fellowships from Hedgebrook, Tin House, Periplus, NYFA, Lambda Literary, the San Francisco Public Library’s James C. Hormel LGBTQIA Center, and more. Their literary art has received support from Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship, Hurston/Wright Writers Week, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, V.O.N.A., and others. Nicole is the founder of Roots. Wounds. Words.—a literary arts revolution that serves BIPOC storytellers, deputy director of PEN America's Prison and Justice Writing, and former editor-in-chief of Black Femme Collective. They have guest edited for The Rumpus, and served on the editorial teams at Women’s Studies Quarterly of The Feminist Press, SLICE Magazine, and more. Nicole curated the "Raising Mothers' limited Justice Involved Mothers" column, which was penned by formerly incarcerated Black women.

Kelly Jean Fitzsimmons is a writer, educator, and storyteller based in Astoria, Queens. Her work has appeared in HILOBROW, Marie Claire, Hippocampus Magazine, and she is the editor of the No, YOU Tell It! Ten-Year Anthology 2022, available from Palm Circle Press. Kelly Jean works as a college essay writing instructor through The Center for Fiction and at several NYC high schools helping students find and craft personal essays that open a window into their unique character for admissions officers. She created and produces No, YOU Tell It!, a nonfiction series that brings together storytellers to trade tales, speak each other’s words, and empower voices on the page and stage. Learn more about the series and listen to our podcast at noyoutellit.com. Follow us @noyoutellit.

Tim Lindner is a course developer, poet, and college Writing Instructor at Middlesex College. He’s published poems in 300 Days of Sun, The Citron Review, The Northern Virginia Review,and more. He also owns a small business, Revisionary Writing and Editing LLC, where he helps people write their resumes, college essays, books and more. He’s been helping No, YOU Tell It! since 2020 as a co-producer, social media content creator, and storytelling coach for the program’s virtual and in-person shows. He recently edited a collection of stories and poems about death and grieving to be published by Tolsun Books in 2023.