The upcoming Speak Up Storytelling event on Saturday, May 9, will West Hartford Public Schools teacher Matthew Dicks, and will be hosted by Elysha Dicks.

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Speak Up is Saturday night!

Our cast features brand-new storytellers, Moth storytellers, bestselling authors, and an Emmy and Peabody award winner.

Plus our surprise live musician, who will be performing before the show and during intermission: Charlie Dicks!

Speak Up will be held on Saturday, May 9, at the Museum for Culture and History in Hartford, beginning at 7 p.m. Tickets are available here.

The theme of the show is “Rebellious.” We have stories about childhood battles, eternal struggles, and desperate attempts to fight against the tyranny of authoritarians, dictators, and parents. Maybe all three.

Storytellers include:

• David Golder
• Kaia Pazdersky
• Teisa Nicoli
• Alison Overholt
• Matthew Dicks

The show will be hosted by Elysha Dicks.

And these shows are the best deal in town! In addition to tickets to the show, you will also receive free beer, wine, soft drinks, and snacks, as well as admission to the museum prior to the show.

A bit about some of our storytellers:

Alison Overholt is a Peabody and Emmy award-winning editor, producer and media executive who has spent her career telling stories about ambition, resilience, and what makes people tick. She’s held leadership roles at some of the world’s biggest media brands, including Oprah Daily and ESPN (where she was the first woman to run a national sports magazine). Along the way, she’s interviewed everyone from elite athletes to cultural icons – and learned that the best stories are usually the ones people almost didn’t tell. These days, Alison teaches the business of media at Columbia Journalism School and runs her own creative content studio, helping brands and individuals shape the stories they tell about themselves. Her favorite local client is Tea Leaf Realty, where she and the team help people find the setting for their next chapter. Alison is cautiously excited to trade the editor’s desk for the storyteller’s mic on the Speak Up stage.

David Golder is an employment attorney at Jackson Lewis PC, which basically means he spends his days helping companies avoid the kinds of workplace disasters that end up in cautionary HR training videos. If there’s an employment issue, he’s seen it, solved it, or prevented it before anyone even had time to panic. He lives in West Hartford with his wife (Shera) and younger daughter (Alex). His older daughter (Pauline) abandoned the family and went to college.

Kaia Pazdersky once catsat for Matthew and Elysha’s cats, Tobi and Pluto. They broke every potted plant in the kitchen, and she felt responsible. She never catsat again.

Tesia Nicoli is a storyteller, speaker, marketing leader, and creative producer with a background in theater, film, and live performance. Raised in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley, she credits her proximity to NYC and Philadelphia for helping spark a passion for the stage. A longtime performer and founder of a community theater company she led for nearly ten years, she believes great stories can entertain, connect, and shift perspective. Tesia recently graduated magna cum laude in Communication Studies, with a minor in Performance & Storytelling, and was selected as her class commencement speaker. She is excited to join SpeakUp and share a story about challenging rules, trusting instinct, and speaking up when it matters most.

Matthew Dicks is an award-winning elementary school teacher and internationally bestselling author of several novels and nonfiction titles, including Storyworthy: Engage, Teach, Persuade, and Change Your Life Through the Power of Storytelling and Stories Sell: Storyworthy Strategies to Build Your Business and Brand. He is a record 64-time Moth StorySLAM and 10-time GrandSLAM champion who performs for audiences worldwide. He’s the founder of Speak Up, a Hartford-based storytelling organization, and CEO of Storyworthy, a company that produces online storytelling instruction and workshops. He teaches public speaking, storytelling, and marketing and branding strategies to corporations, universities, and many more.

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