Editor: Keith Davis Writers: Alex Dippold, Dave Maley Publisher: Office of Public Information Volume 22, No. 6   November 1, 1999

Native American Storyteller to Perform Gayle Ross, a descendant of a Cherokee chief, will present "An Evening of Traditional Native American Stories" on Tuesday, November 9. This free performance, the second in the Office of Multicultural Affairs Racial Awareness Series, will begin at 8:00 p.m. in the pub/coffeehouse in Phillips Hall. Ross grew up hearing traditional Cherokee stories from her grandmother, and this rich heritage is the inspiration for Ross’s storytelling. While working at radio and television jobs in Texas, she discovered people wanted to hear the kinds of traditional stories that were such an integral part of her heritage; she began performing professionally in 1979. Since that time her storytelling has taken her to the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., as well as to schools, libraries, college campuses, and nearly every major storytelling and folk festival in the United States and Canada. She was selected to present stories for the American Library Association’s "Evening of Storytelling" and was included in two touring shows sponsored by the National Council of Traditional Arts. In 1995 Ross was featured in the award- winning documentary How The West Was Lost on the Discovery Channel. Her books, How Rabbit Tricked Otter and The Girl Who Married the Moon, were well reviewed in Publisher’s Weekly, and her audio collection of How Rabbit Tricked Otter won the Ben Franklin Award for best audio cassette of the year from the Publishers Marketing Association. The Racial Awareness Series will continue on Monday, January 17, 2000, when Juan Williams, political analyst and author of Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years 1954–1965, will speak on "Where Do We Go from Here? Race Relations in a Fast-Changing Nation." Nguyen Qui Duc, editor, television producer, and radio commentator, will wrap up the series on April 5 with "Where the Ashes Are: The Vietnamese-American Experience." For more information, call Héctor Vélez-Guadalupe, interim director of the Office of Multicultural Affairs, at 274-1692.