We've been busier than ever since the last newsletter went out in May!

First, we've changed our name. We will now be known as the Healing Story Alliance (HSA). We are still a Special Interest Group (SIG) of the National Storytelling Network (NSN), but our new name is more accurately descriptive and elegant as well.

Our second issue of the journal, Diving in the Moon, went to press and was received with much excitement at the NSN Conference in Rhode Island. It's more professional looking than the first and, more importantly, has even more thought provoking and informative articles on many different aspects of story and healing. If you are a member of HSA and haven't yet received your copy of the journal, please call the NSN office at 1-800-525-4514 and let them know.

We held our first pre-conference workshop in Rhode Island with Erica Helm Meade as our presenter. (See page 7.) We also held an HSA meeting and had a wonderful chance to talk with each other and to imagine where we could go from here. (See page2.) A number of our members came forward to volunteer to help with current and future projects, which is greatly appreciated. If you weren't able to be at the meeting, but would like to volunteer, please, please let us know. BTW, we could use a volunteer to coordinate volunteers!

We asked meeting attendees to fill out a brief feedback form about their preferences for future pre-conference workshops (one or more presenters, one or more days, etc.). The board will be looking at those responses when making future plans. A good percentage of people liked the possibility of multiple presenters and expanding to a two-day pre-conference workshop, or even more. We will have only one main presenter for the 2002 conference in Denver due to cost and availability. We will continue to explore alternatives for future pre-conferences.

We are pleased to announce that Dr. William Noonan, will be facilitating our 2002 pre-conference workshop for the NSN Conference in Denver, CO. It promises to be a solid, participatory workshop with broad applicability to the work that many of us are drawn to do. (See details on page 8.)

Our HealingStory listserv has been growing and becoming more active with fascinating discussions and descriptions of experience with healing stories. Our website at www.HealingStory.org continues to expand, with more to come. There's been interesting conversation about the stories posted on the Forum. HSA members are welcome to submit stories with essays on their use for the Forum, as well as articles for the newsletter or the journal. Send submissions to Allison Cox, Diane Wyzga or me using the contact information on page 2.

Future plans abound as well. Board member Andre Heuer continues to gather responses to his request for volunteers to work on the community network project. That should begin to take shape in October 2001.

Here's another change that will be coming soon: As written in the original by-laws for this SIG, board members are to be appointed by board members. However, the current board would like to change that in order to have members vote to select leadership. I'll be working to design an election procedure and policy and hope to have that in place by October 2001. There will be some elected board members and some appointments by the board. Until the election procedures are in place, the board will replace any members as needed. If you are interested in serving on the board in the future, (there's lots to do), please let me know.

We will be meeting at the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough in October 2001. We hope that an announcement of the HSA meeting will be in the program book. If for some reason it's not, come to the NSN tent and ask for the time and location. Hope to see you there!

        Gail Rosen, Founder

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