Kentucky Storyteller Weaves Fascinating Mountain Tales

BY SHANNON HOLBROOK

Rockcastle County’s Octavia Sexton has been captivating audiences for over 20 years as a professional storyteller. She credits Christian Appalachian Project (CAP) with helping her get her start.

“If it had not been for CAP — that was a lifesaver,” Sexton said as she recounted early married life to husband Marion. They had two small children and lived in a small house without running water. One winter they ran out of heat and food.

Working unreliable, underpaid jobs crippled them financially, until Sexton spent two years writing stories about her life for “The Mountain Spirit” starting in 1983. She also worked for CAP as a secretary, then a preschool teacher. “One of the directors told me, ‘you know, you’re smart — you should go to college,’” Sexton recalled.

She drove Sexton to Berea College, where no student pays for tuition, and helped her apply. At age 37, she started college.

Her storytelling class with Dr. Harry Robie launched her professional career. “When it came my turn to tell a story in class for my final, I used one of Grandpa’s stories in my dialect,” she said. “You could’ve heard a pin drop, and Dr. Robie said, ‘you should’ve been teaching this class.’”

He paid her $5 a visit to tell stories to his classes, leading to a faculty event for $75, then a storytelling festival in Louisville, which led to a $750 event.

She pursued storytelling fulltime in 2000. “All my past experience, people I’ve known — all of them are my story, what I know,” she said.

“Growing up, my school curriculum was a storytelling tree we’d sit under,” she shared. “I could make anything up.”

She shares her Jack Tales and Haint Tales, and how Thump Slide was created to rattle her defiant fourth grade son.

Storytelling like Sexton’s is rare. “There’s a lot of professional storytellers today, but very few in the oral tradition like me,” she said. “Some stories are written down, but not with a dialect like mine.” Last year she received a $13,000 South Arts Fellowship to research her family’s stories in Ireland, however, plans are on hold for all her travel due to the pandemic. She’ll return to storytelling when COVID-19 is under control.

She concluded, “It’s hard on me not to be in front of people, sharing my stories about my people.”

(above) Octavia Sexton now shares the stories she heard growing up with the next generation.

(above) Sexton learned to weave her cultural traditions and wisdom into her storytelling from her grandparents, Cleo and Isaac Bowman.

(above) Octavia (with sweater) sits with her Grandma and cousins