Free storytelling session in which Franque Bains and Janine Evans portray Ida B. Wells and Emily Dickinson, followed by a Q&A, as part of the America250 series.
Story Crossroads and the Utah Storytelling Guild are bringing a storytelling pairing to the Salt Lake Art Museum on Thursday, December 17, with Franque Bains as Ida B. Wells and Janine Evans as Emily Dickinson. It's part of a series called Storytelling Pairings: A Blended Celebration of American Legacy, which runs on the second and third Thursdays from October through December 2026. The whole series asks how truth, imagination, and the written word can challenge injustice and leave a legacy that endures across generations.
On the night, Bains and Evans take on Wells and Dickinson, with historical portrayals of Sojourner Truth (Charlotte Starks) and Susan B. Anthony (Jan C. Smith) also featured. The first hour is the performance itself, followed by 20 to 30 minutes of Q&A. The show will be filmed and shared on the Story Crossroads YouTube channel, so if you can't make it in person, you can still catch it later.
There's a bit of a larger story behind the series, too. Story Crossroads is one of only 50 organizations nationwide selected to receive an America250 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, and they're presenting this alongside the Utah Storytelling Guild and the Nubian Storytellers of Utah Leadership. The pairing of Wells and Dickinson—one a journalist and activist who fought lynching and Jim Crow, the other a poet who worked in the quiet of her home—is just one of the combinations the series explores over the course of the fall.
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It runs from 5:30 to 7:00 PM at the Salt Lake Art Museum, 249 South 400 East, Salt Lake City, UT 84111. Admission is free, but you'll need to RSVP or register in advance.
