A Brief Bio

about

Sharon Kirk Clifton, Storyteller and Writer

 

   

Sharon's family has been in Indiana since the early 1800s, when her Quaker ancestors left North Carolina to come north and settle Wayne and Henry counties. She is a kinswoman to Levi Coffin, well-known Indiana Abolitionist and stationmaster on the Underground Railroad; Sharon's and Levi's immigrant ancestors were brothers. With short-term residencies in Greenfield and Spiceland, Sharon spent most of her childhood in New Castle, Henry County, Indiana.

Ask her when she began telling stories, and she will tell you that she was born telling stories. That may be a bit of an exaggeration, but after all, she is a storyteller, and storytellers are given to hyperbole. She does remember hearing stories at her mother's knee from her earliest days.

"My mother [Martha Carolyn Wright] used to tell me the traditional folk and faerie tales," Sharon says, "but she also told me stories of her own life, especially her childhood. I grew up hearing about how she rejected her daddy when he came home after having had his handlebar moustache shaved off. She also told me that her mother would walk Mama and her four siblings to church every Sunday morning and night. Because it would be dark when they headed home after the evening service, her mother would sing hymns to soothe the children and calm their fears." Ah, the power of Story!

Sharon's father told some stories, as well. From him, she learned about a favorite history teacher who had used "story" and reenactment to bring the past to life in the classroom. Though she heard that story often, Sharon says that she never tired of it. "It inspired me." When Sharon became an English teacher, she used story extensively in her own classroom. She resigned classroom teaching in 1996 "to enter a broader classroom," she says. "I'm still teaching, but I'm doing it my way, by putting a pulse to the past and bringing literature to life."

Sharon says that she was inspired to become a professional storyteller when she heard the "Johnny Appleseed" performance by Hank Fincken, who bills himself as "a national theatre company of one." She heard him do his show three times in the same day at Conner Prairie, a living history museum in Fishers, Ind. "I talked with him following his last performance," she remembers. "'I'd like to do what you do,'" she recalls saying. He told her to find a character and develop it. Five years later, following earning her B.S. degree at Ball State University, she discovered the Jack Tales of the southern Appalachians. Noticing that Jack's mother showed up in many of the stories, Sharon knew that she had her first storytelling character, Jack's Mama! It remains a favorite of audiences.

Through the years, she has received various grants and commissions to research, develop, and perform various historical programs. See Program Information for more information.

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